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MENTAL DISCIPLINE & 
EDUCATIONAL VALUES 



MENTAL DISCIPLINE & 
EDUCATIONAL VALUES 



W. H. HECK, M.A. 

Professor of Education, University of Virginia 



New York 

JOHN LANE COMPANY 

MCMIX 



e\ 



Copyright, 1909, by 
W. H. HECK 






THE PREMIER PRESS 
NEW YORK 



TO MY MOTHER 



MENTAL DISCIPLINE AND 
EDUCATIONAL VALUES 

INTRODUCTION 

It is time that recent modifications of the hon- 
ored doctrine of formal discipline should have 
more effect on our practice. Though a great 
many teachers still believe in the old theory, 
whether or not they have carefully thought 
out their belief, the American students of educa- 
tional psychology have been approaching a new 
point of view. They are reaching an agreement 
upon the inadequacy of "the doctrine of the ap- 
plicability of mental power, however gained, to 
any department of human activity," or "the gym- 
nastic theory of education that it does not matter 
upon what the mind is exercised, provided only 
the matter be vigorous and long-continued." 
(De Garmo.) 1 Most of the recent American 
and a few of the recent foreign books on educa- 

1 De Garmo, Dictionary of Philanthropy and Psychology, "Formal 
Culture." 



8 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

tion suggest some modification of the doctrine of 
formal discipline, but the discussion of the sub- 
ject is still in the polemical stage. 

General destructive criticism is not sufficient. 
We must come to realize in what specific ways 
the doctrine of formal discipline is false and in 
what specific ways it affects unfavorably present 
aims, curricula, and methods. But even then our 
position would still be negative and therefore, at 
best, only a means to some positive conclusion. 
We must also establish a standard for the disci- 
plinary value of studies and then apply that stand- 
ard to the different elements in the curriculum. 
If we do not, we have accomplished little. Why 
and in what ways should a pupil get mental dis- 
cipline from this or that study? To show why 
and in what way he does not get it is valuable 
only as a process of elimination in working 
toward a positive diagnosis. But even then, we 
have a third problem, the practical modification 
of courses and methods so as to gain from each 
and every part of each and every study its real, 
not to strive for its imagined, disciplinary value. 
These three large problems are discouraging 
when seen together in their significance. The 
practical changes involved are so far-reaching 
and the need for them so difficult to prove defin- 



INTRODUCTION 9 

itely that both profession and laity are skeptical. 
In contrast to these difficulties, the doctrine of 
formal discipline has the momentum of tradition, 
it is emphasized by influential authorities, it has 
a powerful hold upon many teachers, it is easy 
to understand in its superficial meaning, it seems to 
explain many evident results of education, and 
it has long been the cause and the defence of 
dominant phases of curricula and methods. One 
should not be surprised, therefore, that the doc- 
trine continues to make itself felt throughout our 
school system and that the opposition to it is 
disorganized, timid, and bookish. 

Can educators afford to allow this opposition to 
remain unproductive? If the doctrine of formal 
discipline were of little influence in present prac- 
tice, they might content themselves with theoretical 
objections, but the prominence of the doctrine 
necessitates definite, practical suggestions and at- 
tempts to modify it. If mental discipline is 
specific, not general, there is a pressing need to 
recognize the fact and to reorganize school 
courses and methods. Popular and professional 
misunderstanding will yield in time to a clear 
presentation of the value of a course based upon 
a theory of specific disciplines, of specialized 
habits, rather than a theory of general discipline, 



io MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

of generalized habits. 1 The time is ripe for 
working out and testing the actual disciplinary 
value of the subjects and parts of subjects in the 
school course. The experiments so far made are 
suggestive, though not conclusive, in regard to 
the changes needed, and they point the way for 
further theory and practice. 

Testing theory and practice in order to prove 
the comparative disciplinary value of the ele- 
ments in the curriculum is very difficult, due to 
the number and subtlety of the factors involved; 
yet no one can gainsay the truth that studies 
ought to prove their worth before they are ac- 
credited with an undisputed place in the curri- 
culum. If educators can work out no proof of the 
comparative disciplinary value of studies, they are 
doomed to wander in the dark, with no clear 
ideas to guide them in planning courses and 
methods intelligently. 

This essay is but a tentative effort to modify 
the doctrine of formal discipline and, upon such 
a modification, to establish a standard of educa- 
tional values. There has been no attempt to make 

1 As a good illustration of how the doctrine of specific disciplines has 
affected recent books on special methods, reference is made to Huey, 
Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, pp. 363-5. The mental discipline 
emphasized by Huey, though far-reaching in its effects, is kept within 
the limits of reading, the special activity by which it is to be developed, 
or is applied to similar activities. 



INTRODUCTION n 

a full discussion of the subject but merely an out- 
line for further study, a syllabus for individual 
or class use. The problems of mental discipline 
are too unsettled at present for any one to be 
dogmatic or to attempt more than brief sugges- 
tions. A secondary purpose of this essay has 
been to sum up and organize the recent discus- 
sions of the disciplinary value of studies, in hope 
that our readers will get a first-hand idea of how 
far students of education have advanced in their 
thought on this subject. It is also hoped that 
the numerous quotations will save them the time 
and trouble of searching through the widely scat- 
tered material from which our summary has been 
made. Most of these quotations are grouped to- 
gether in four parts of this essay, where they 
can be omitted without great loss; but we trust 
that their value and interest will atone for our 
giving them so much space. In class discussions 
of the doctrine of formal discipline, we have felt 
the need of such a symposium of opinions to put 
in the hands of students as a source-book for 
parallel reading. The references at the bottom 
of the pages will furnish a fairly comprehensive 
bibliography for further study. 



THE DOCTRINE OF FORMAL 
DISCIPLINE. 

The doctrine of formal discipline was implied 
in the educational practices of the Greeks and the 
Romans, gymnastics, music, and oratory being 
used to furnish a general physical and mental 
discipline applicable to all the needs of individual 
and civic life. The doctrine was at the basis of 
the ascetic discipline of the mediaeval monastics, 
who sought a complete development of the soul 
at the expense of bodily desires. It dominated 
the ideals and methods of scholastic education, 
with the drill upon the trivium and quadrivium 
culminating in the barren formalism and logical 
subtelties of University disputations, the ideal 
example in the Middle Ages of general reasoning 
power. But the doctrine was first clearly formu- 
lated as an educational theory in the seventeenth 
century, to serve as a defence of the classical 
studies, when their intrinsic value had been 
greatly reduced by the use of the national ver- 
naculars in literature, government, and education, 

13 



14 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

and when the current emphasis upon them had 
been criticized by the growing spirit of realism in 
educational thought. Monroe gives an interest- 
ing account of this movement and of its influence 
in the next two centuries, especially upon the 
English secondary school and the German gym- 
nasium. 

"By the seventeenth century the linguistic and 
literary curriculum had become traditional, with 
the authority of the learning of two centuries be- 
hind it and with a scholastic procedure which in 
details of method and of curriculum, in the entire 
technique of the schoolroom, had never been 
equaled by any previous system of educational 
practice Since this narrow humanistic edu- 
cation no longer had any direct connection with 
the practical demands of the times and no longer 
offered the sole approach to a knowledge of 
human achievement and thought, a new theory 
must be found to justify its perpetuation. This 
new theory was, in a word, that the important 
thing in education was not the thing learned, but 
the process of learning. In respect to this prin- 
ciple, the new education was but a revival of 
the formalism of mediaeval scholasticism." 

"The mind as a bundle of faculties was to be 
developed by exercising these various powers 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE 15 

upon appropriate tasks whose value consisted in 
the difficulties they offered. These faculties were 
considered to have no necessary connection with 
one another, hence these disciplines were separate 
and distinct things; though some faculties were 
higher than others. The highest was the reason- 
ing power to be developed by appropriate disci- 
pline in mathematics, logical disputations, and 
the languages; but the faculty upon which all the 
others depended, and upon the successful devel- 
opment of which depended the success of the 
education, was the memory. Discipline of the 
memory then took precedence above all other 
exercises. The best training for the memory 
was afforded by the mastery of material which 
had no inherent interest for the child." 1 

The doctrine has not been essentially changed 
during the past two centuries, though it has been 
elaborated and applied in many ways. As it was 
based on the "faculty" psychology, its dominance 
was doomed when the latter was refuted; but the 
doctrine continued dominant long after its basis 
was destroyed, the close connection between the 
two was generally overlooked, and even now 
many people hold to the doctrine, who would re- 



1 Monroe, Text Book in the History of Education, pp. 505, 506, 56?, 
568. 



16 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

sent an intimation that they were also holding 

to the "faculty" psychology. 

During the third quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
tury the doctrine of formal discipline was vigor- 
ously used and its validity was impaired in the con- 
flict between the classics and mathematics on one 
side and the natural and social sciences on the 
other. Spencer and Huxley were the great prota- 
gonists for the sciences in this conflict. In 1867 
there was published in this country a collection of 
essays by prominent scientists on the "Claims of 
Scientific Education." These essays illustrate 
stages in the evolution of thought from the tra- 
ditional doctrine of formal discipline to the 
present doctrine of specific disciplines. The main 
argument for the disciplinary value of the scienes 
is based on both the superior formal discipline 
and the superior specific disciplines and knowl- 
edge to be derived from them. The authors vary 
in their emphasis upon the former or upon the 
latter superiorities, but in general they emphasize 
a combination of both. This combination is well 
stated in the following extract from Youmans* 
introductory chapter on "Mental Discipline in 
Education": 

"Let it be remembered that this culture does 
not deny the importance of mental discipline, but 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE 17 

only the wasteful policy of vicarious discipline. 
The question has three aspects. The ancients 
employed the useless fact A for disciplinary pur- 
poses, and ignored the useful fact B. The ad- 
herents of the current theory propose to learn 
first the useless fact A to get the discipline nec- 
essary to acquire the useful fact B ; while a ration- 
al system ignores useless A and attacks B at once, 
making it serve both for knowledge and disci- 
pline. The ancient view was more reasonable 
than that which has grown out of it. It wanted 
one acquisition, and it made it; the prevailing 
method wants one, and makes two ; and as it costs 
as much effort to learn a useless fact as a useful 
one, by this method half the power is wasted." 1 

A further advance is represented by the fol- 
lowing quotations from Bain, written in 1878: 

"Most definitions of training are obscured 
through the mode of describing mind by faculties. 
We have seen that to train 'Memory' is a very 
vague way of speaking. Equally vague is it to 
talk of training Reason, Conception, Imagina- 
tion, and so forth. Moral training is much more 
intelligible; there is here a habit of suppressing 
certain active tendencies of the mind, and foster- 
ing others; and this is done by a special discipline 

x Youmans et al., The Culture Demanded by Modern Life, p. 23. 



iS MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

— like training horses or making soldiers." "The 
element of Form, Method, Order, Organization, 
as contrasted with the subject-matter viewed with- 
out reference to form, has a value of its own; 
and any material that displays it to advantage, 
and enables it to be acquired, is justified by that 
circumstance alone. The targets used in learning 
to shoot, the wooden soldiers that are aimed at 
in the sabre drill, although unreal, are effectual." 
"It depends partly on the teacher and partly on 
the scholar whether the element of method shall 
stand forth and extend itself, or whether the sub- 
jects shall only yield their own quantum of matter 
or information." 1 

The present opinion on the subject is what con- 
cerns us here. To illustrate this opinion we quote 
both from adherents and from opponents to the 
doctrine of formal discipline. Such a group of 
quotations seems the most direct and useful way to 
represent the many-sided discussion of this prob- 
lem. Out of the wealth of material illustrating 
the former position, we make two quotations from 
American books and two from English books, one 
book in each group being on educational psy- 
chology and one on school organization. The 
fifth quotation is from an American professor's 

a Bain, Education as a Science, pp. 139-141. 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE iy 

plea for return to the method of the days when the 
doctrine of formal discipline reigned supreme. 

u Every normal act of the mind leaves as a 
result an increased power to act in like manner, 
and a tendency to act again — power and tendency 
being the results of all right mental action. The 
power and tendency of the mind to observe is in- 
creased by observing; to imagine, by imagining; 
to judge, by judging; to reason, by reasoning, etc. 
An increase of the mind's power and tendency to 
put forth a given activity is what is meant by its 
development and training." The author objects 
to carrying his theory to its extreme conclusion. 
"The study of a branch of knowledge that trains 
several powers of the mind, may increase its 
capacity to master other branches that appeal to 
these powers. The critical study of language, for 
example, calls into exercise mental powers that 
are much used even in the mastery of botany, 
zoology, and other natural sciences. It is claimed 
that an increase of the mind's power to acquire 
one kind of knowledge increases its power to ac- 
quire all knowledge. This may be true, to some 
extent, but the exclusive activity of the mind in 
one direction may so increase its tendency thus 
to act as practically to incapacitate it to act in 



20 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

other directions, the tendency becoming a habit." 

(White.) 1 

"Discipline is that condition of the mind which 
is characterized by power — power to perceive, to 
remember, to reflect, and to feel intensely, but to 
restrain feeling — and by skill to do these things 
quickly and well, and to express them adequately. 
Those who have claimed that there is no such 
thing as 'general discipline' — that there are mem- 
ories, but not memory, judgments, but not judg- 
ment, and so on — are quite as wrong as those 
who, earlier, claimed that general discipline was 
the chief, if not the sole, end of education. The 
experience of every educated man and woman, 
and the increasing demand, in every kind of busi- 
ness, for the graduates of high schools and col- 
leges, give conclusive evidence of the value of 
general discipline. Such evidence is far stronger 
than any amount of a priori theorizing, or the 
sporadic experimenting that has been done in 
psychological laboratories." (Roark.) 2 This quo- 
tation is probably a reply to Thorndike, who used 
an extract from a previous book by Roark to 
head a list of quotations illustrating the doctrine 
of formal discipline. 



1 White, Elements of Pedagogy, pp. 119, 120. 

2 Roark, Economy in Education, p. 207. 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE 21 

"Suitable opportunities must be found for the 
exercise of desirable feelings, so that good habits 
of feeling may be formed. The feelings are 
principally egoistic, and consequently anti-social. 
The school discipline must therefore allow for 
their checking or regulation on the one hand, and 
for the cultivation of the social affections, as anti- 
dotes, on the other. Finally, as feeling ascends 
in the scale it involves the intellectual elements, 
and especially the faculties of memory and 
imagination. These faculties must therefore be 
properly cultivated and supplemented later on 
with the development of the child's reasoning 
powers, so that the final product may show itself 
in right conduct and good character." Here we 
have habits, faculties, powers generalized. One 
other illustration from these authors. "Arithme- 
tic is a subject which if properly taught makes 
powerful appeals to the judgment. Some arith- 
metical exercises are admittedly and necessarily 
mechanical, but 'problems' are among the finest 
school exercises for training the judging faculty." 
(Dexter and Garlick.) 1 

"Objects of the study of languages in schools. 
(1) To enable us to express our thoughts 
correctly. 

1 Dexter and Garlick, Psychology in the Schoolroom, pp. 2x1, 169. 



22 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

(2) To train (a) the memory, (b) the 

judgment, (3) the aesthetic faculty, 
(d) the imagination. 

(3) To open the door for all the other 

studies. 

(4) To exercise the reasoning powers. 

(5) To afford a mental discipline, by the 

consideration of the words apart 
from the things they symbolize. 

(6) To develop habits of exactness and 

precision." (Collar and Crook.) 1 
"The practical aim of a general education is 
such training as shall enable a man to devote his 
faculties intently to matters which of themselves 
do not interest him. The power which enables 
a man to do so is obviously the power of volun- 
tary, as distinguished from spontaneous, atten- 
tion In other words, whatever interest peo- 
ple commands their spontaneous attention, and ac- 
cordingly such power of concentration as is nat- 
urally theirs. But if a man is to make anything 
whatever out of a matter which does not interest 
him, he must concentrate his powers on it by a 
strenuous act of attention controlled by the full 
power of his will The elder education, to 

1 Collar and Crook, School Management and Methods of Instruction, 
pp. 129, 130. 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE 23 

be sure, cultivated voluntary attention, not because 
it specifically insisted that pupils should unintelli- 
gently devote tedious years to grammars and dic- 
tionaries of Latin and Greek, or to lifeless var- 
iants of the extinct vitality of Euclid; but, un- 
knowingly, it cultivated the faculty well. Through 
daily hours, throughout all their youthful years, 
it compelled boys, in spite of every human reluc- 
tance, to fix their attention on matters which, of 
themselves, could never have held attention for 
five minutes together. No doubt, plenty of sub- 
jects other than classics or mathematics could 
have been made to serve this purpose and could 
be made to serve it now. You can hardly imagine 
a subject, essentially uninteresting, which would 
not reward plodding work with a similar result — 
with substantial ignorance of the matter studied, 
but with increasingly and lastingly muscular 
power of voluntary attention." (Wendell.) 1 

This general value of specific training in volun- 
tary attention is also emphasized in the following 
discussion by Angell, though the authors point 
of view is somewhat different from that of Wen- 
dell. The article from which the extract is taken 
does not argue for the transfer of acquired abil- 



1 Wendell, The Privileged Classes, "Our National Superstition," 171- 
174. 



24 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

ity beyond the common elements in the processes 
involved, but it does argue for the very general 
usableness and importance of many of the com- 
mon elements in specific training. 

"The persistent and voluntarily directed use 
of attention, especially when the subject attended 
to is lacking in interest, speedily becomes acutely 
distasteful. Voluntary attention involves some 
strain, and this strain, if long continued, is certain 
to become unpleasant. We first become bored, 
then restless, and finally find the thing intolerable 
and abandon it. Now no small part of the dis- 
cipline which comes from the effortful use of 
attention in any direction or on any topic is to be 
found in the habituation which is afforded in 
neglecting or otherwise suppressing unpleasant or 
distracting sensations. We learn to 'stand it,' 
in short. This fact has been pointed out at times 
by writers on these topics, but it is rarely given 
the importance which it properly deserves. Any- 
one can attend to things which interest or please 
him as long as his physical strength holds out. 
But to attend in the face of difficulties which are 
not entertaining is distinctly an acquired taste, 
one to which children and primitive people al- 
ways strenuously object. From this point of view 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE 25 

it may well be that such studies as the classics and 
certain forms of mathematics have a peculiar 
value in affording the maximum of unpleasantness 
diluted with a minimum of native interest, so that 
a student who learns to tolerate prolonged at- 
tending to their intricacies may find almost any 
undertaking by contrast easy and grateful. The 
actual mental mechanism by which this intellec- 
tual and moral acclimatization is secured, is ex- 
tremely interesting, but we cannot pause to dis- 
cuss it. Certain it is that something of the sort 
occurs and that it is an acquirement which may 
presumably be carried over from one type of 
occupation to another. If each form of effortful 
attention had a wholly unique type of discomfort 
attached to it, this inference might be challenged. 
But such does not seem to be the case." 1 

As early as 1878 Bain had expressed the same 
idea : "There is a form of mental efficiency that 
attaches more or less to every productive effort— 
the giving attention to all the rules and conditions 

necessary for the result intended This is a 

discipline that we learn from everything that we 
have to do; it is not a prerogative of any one 



^ngell (J. R.), Educational Review, June, 1908, "The Doctrine of 
Formal Discipline in the Light of the Principles of General Psychology," 
PP- 9, 10. 



26 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

study or occupation, and it does not necessarily 

extend itself beyond the special subject." 1 

Our second group is composed of quotations 
from those who oppose the doctrine of formal 
discipline, claiming that discipline is specific, not 
general, and therefore cannot be transferred 
from one function to another except in so far as 
the two functions have elements in common. 

"The law appears to be this: in so far as the 
second exertion involves the same muscles and 
nerves as the first one, and, particularly, in so far 
as it calls for the same co-ordination of muscles 
and nerves, the power created by the first exertion 
will be available. In other words, the result is 
determined by the congruity or incongruity of the 
two efforts." "Through repetition, the energiz- 
ing process becomes easier and more rapid. Re- 
peated activity in the same direction tends to 
groove the mind, or, to change the figure, the 
stream of activity digs out for itself a permanent 
channel of discharge. Mental power is of two 
kinds, specific and generic. In other words, the 
power that is generated in any activity can be 
fully used again in the same kind of activity, but 
only partly used in other kinds — the measure of 

1 Bain, Education as a Science, pp. 141, 142. 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE 27 

the difference being the relative unlikeness of the 
two activities." (Hinsdale.) 1 

"The mind is by no means a collection of a few 
general faculties, observation, attention, memory, 
reasoning and the like, but is the sum total of 
countless particular capacities, each of which is to 
some extent independent of the others, — each of 
which must to some extent be educated by itself. 
The task of teaching is not to develop a reason- 
ing faculty, but many special powers of thought 
about different kinds of facts. It is not to alter 
our general power of attention, but to build up 
many particular powers of attending to different 
kind of facts 

"Training the mind means the development of 
thousands of particular independent capacities, 
the formation of countless particular habits, for 
the working of any mental capacity depends upon 
the concrete data with which it works. Improve- 
ment of any one mental function or activity will 
improve others only in so far as they possess ele- 
ments common to it also. The amount of identical 
elements in different mental functions and the 
amount of general influence from special training 
are much less than common opinion supposes. 

1 Hinsdale, Studies in Education, pp. 47, 73. 



28 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

The most common and surest source of general 
improvement of a capacity is to train it in many- 
particular connections." (Thorndike.) 1 

"It is agreed that wherever practice in one 
exercise leads to improvement in another certain 
specific elements in both are identical and call 
forth identical responses which promote success 
in both exercises. The identical elements that 
are thus distinguished may be divided into two 
groups, those of content and those of form. As 
examples of content elements we may mention 
sounds, colors, letters, nonsense syllables, words, 
objects, kinds of geometrical figures, standards of 
measurement, ideas, etc. As one grows familiar 
with such elements, the power to remember them 
pnd to attend to them when they appear in new 
situations and to do what they suggest increases. 
The elements of form may be said to consist of 
the characteristics that the various situations 
present as problems for the attacking mind. Thus 
we recognize one situation as a problem of mem- 
orizing where from the nature of the material a 
particular method of committing to memory may 
be especially useful. Again, we recognize the 
need of particular adjustments of perception, 
such as movements which we have already prac- 



^horndike, Principles of Teaching, pp. 240, 248. 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE 29 

ticed. All situations demand adjustments of at- 
tention, some of which may invariably be neces- 
sary, while others may suit especially specific 
kinds of material. 

"We observe that elements of form and ele- 
ments of content are equally specific, equally ca- 
pable of definition. Moreover, both are capable 
of generalization — that is, both are capable of 
appearing in a variety of settings. The problem 
of general training is then quite as much one of 
discipline in content, as it is of discipline in form. 
A better division of mental discipline for our pur- 
poses would be into two phases which we may 
denominate specific discipline and general disci- 
pline. Specific discipline consists in the analysis 
of the specific elements which are to be found to 
be critical in determining certain reactions, and 
in the practice by which the appropriate reaction 
is made the habitual response to each element 
thus discriminated. General discipline consists of 
training in the recognition of these critical ele- 
ments in a variety of situations." (Henderson.) 1 

Representation should be given at this point to 
some Herbartian attacks on the doctrine of for- 
mal discipline. Herbart's psychology has had 



Henderson, Education, May, 1909, "Formal Discipline from the 
Standpoint of Analytic and Experimental Psychology," pp. 609, 610. 



3 o MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

considerable influence in modifying the old point 
of view, on account of its refutation of the "fac- 
ulty" psychology, its doctrine of apperception, 
and its emphasis upon interest. The theory that 
mental life is the result of ideas and their apper- 
ceiving masses has been used to deny the spread 
of training beyond the ideas by means of which 
the training was previously acquired. This is 
justifiable, if the theory is not carried so far as 
to make mental discipline little more than apper- 
ception of ideas. 

The German Herbartian, Rein, thus disposes 
of the doctrine of formal discipline: "The fiction 
of 'formal education' must be given up. In gen- 
eral, there is no such education at all; there exist 
simply as many' kinds of formal education as 
there are essentially different spheres of intellec- 
tual employment." 1 The English Herbartian, 
Adams, has a delightful chapter on "Formal Ed- 
ucation," satirizing the emphasis upon form re- 
gardless of content by showing the superiority 
from this point of view of Fagin's school of crime 
in "Oliver Twist." "In short, the soul is not a 
mere knife that may be sharpened on any whet- 
stone, and when sharpened may be applied to any 
purpose — to cut cheese or to excise a cancer. The 

1 Rein, Outlines of Pedagogics, p. 61. 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE 31 

knife takes character from the whetstone." 
"Since we cannot have the knowing ego by itself, 
and since each new fact is acted upon by the facts 
which then form part of the apperceiving soul, 
it follows that the more facts that have been or- 
ganized into faculty, the more readily will the 
mind act, and the greater will be the range of facts 
upon which it will act easily. There are here two 
different qualities — readiness and range. The 
former is acquired by practice in apperceiving the 
same or closely allied facts; the latter by apper- 
ceiving a large number of facts of different char- 
acter." 1 Here we have an over-emphasis upon 
apperception. This chapter is applied by Hay- 
ward to the problems of instruction in moral train- 
ing. "Power and skill and the other qualities de- 
sired by the advocates of formal training depend 
on apperception masses, and are limited by them." 
"Habits do not seem, to any important extent, to 
become generalized; the generalizing factors in 
conduct — though our author does not expressly 
say this— are not habits, but ideas." 2 

The following quotation is from an early reply 
to the Herbartians by Hugh, who upholds the doc- 
trine of formal discipline, though recognizing 



1 Adams, Herbartian Psychology Applied to Education, pp. 126, 131. 

2 Hay ward, Education and the Heredity Spectre, p. 107. 



32 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

"that the disciplinary value of studies should be 
sought, as far as possible, in those that have a 
value on account of their content." 

"It seems, then, that formal education is to 
some extent a reality, according to the teachings 
of physiological psychology, both in the perma- 
nence of the acquisition derived from studies 
apart from their knowledge value, and also in the 
general application of this increased power for 
other forms of mental activity. Intellectual train- 
ing stands on very much the same basis as physical 
training. A man's physical nature can be trained 
by doing useful work or the exercises of the 
gymnasium, which have no value whatever except 
their effect upon the physical system of the per- 
former. So one's brain system can be trained in 
studies that have a knowledge value for the in- 
dividual, but also in those that have none. In 
both cases, of course, it is best that the gymnastics 
should be secured in the performance of useful 
work, as in this case two ends are gained at the 
same time; but as, perhaps, all kinds of work 
only partially develop one's physical powers, so 
that it is necessary to have recourse to gymnastics 
to complete the physical training, in the same way 
it may be necessary to have special exercise to 
develop particular brain functions, though such 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE 33 

exercises have no knowledge value in themselves. 
In fact, it may be found that many physical ex- 
ercises, that usually are not classed as mental 
training, have no less value for the training of the 
mind than the study of the classics or the sciences, 
that manual labor, foot-ball, and other forms of 
athletics are just as potent factors in intellectual 
development as many subjects of the curriculum; 
as they not only train the muscular system, but 
also the brain cells by which the muscles are con- 
trolled." 1 

Finally, we make a third group of quotations, 
those from authors who try to combine both ad- 
herence and opposition to the doctrine of formal 
discipline. These authors take about the same 
position as do those of the second group, but they 
lay greater emphasis upon the extended usable- 
ness of the common elements of subject-matter 
and especially of method in many functions. 
There is little reason for the third group to be 
considered as upholders of the doctrine of formal 
discipline and as opposed to the doctrine of spe- 
cific disciplines. And there is also little reason for 
one group to criticise the other. They both really 
modify the old formalist doctrine for the same 



1 Hugh, Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1898, "Formal Education from 
the Standpoint of Physiological Psychology," p. 604. 



34 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

reason, limiting the transfer of acquired ability 
to the common elements in the processes involved. 
However, the critics of the third group have done 
good service in cautioning against extremes and 
in suggesting many relations between functions, 
which were not thought of before. 

"Each of the numerous habits of the brain 
means tendencies to the excitement of localised 
tracts and paths under given physical conditions. 
An excitement passing over one set of paths leads 
to one system of external movements, e.g. from 
eye centre to hand centre, when one sees and then 
grasps. If circumstances vary the paths, they vary 

the motor results Whatever has happened 

to the brain in the past has meant some definite 
and usually sharply localised interchange of in- 
duced activities among its elements. Every such 
interchange has altered the minutest structure of 
all the elements concerned, has established local- 
ised paths between them for future inductions to 
follow. They can never act again precisely as 
they would have done had they not acted once in 
just this way. And this is what is meant by sayirg 
that the brain forms its habits. One must now, in 
addition, note that this formation of habits may 
occur in the most subtle fashions. Parts that 
have often functioned together tend to function 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE 35 

more easily together again. This is true down 
to the minutest detail of localised functions. But 
what is still more significant for all our higher 
mental life is, that general forms or types of ac- 
tivity, however subtle their nature , when once they 
have resulted from a given exchange of induced 
activities {due to sensory stimulations) , may tend 
thereby to become henceforth more easily re- 
excited, so that habits of our brain may come to 
be fixed, not merely as to the mere routine which 
leads to this or to that special act, but as to the 
general ways in which acts are done. A given 
'set' of the brain as a whole, that is, a given sort 
of preparedness to be influenced in a certain way 
— yes, even a given tendency to change, under 
particular conditions, our more specific fashions of 
activity — may thus become a matter of relatively 

or of entirely fixed habits It is indeed true 

that, owing to the localised character of the 
phenomena which determine single habits, the 
training of one specialized cerebral function, 
in any particular case, may not result in 
the training of some other specialised func- 
tion, even where we, viewing the matter 
from without, have supposed that these 
two functions were very intimately connected. 
The question as to what effect the training of 



36 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

any one special function will have upon other 
functions, or upon the general tendencies of the 
brain, is therefore always a question to be 
answered by specific experience. This the teacher, 
in estimating the effects of new educational de- 
vices upon the pupils, must always remember." 
(Royce.) 1 

"It seems clear enough that the spreading or 
transference in the mind of the good effects of any 
course of training is much more narrowly circum- 
scribed than has commonly been supposed, but it 
may still be doubted whether such spreading in- 
fluence is altogether wanting or is limited to the 
transference of definite ideas. Moreover, it 
seems not improbable that the freedom with 
which the gains of culture circulate among our 
mental functions and contents may differ greatly 
in different individuals and may increase in the 
same individual as he matures in life and advances 
in his course of training. So the psychological de- 
termination of the possibility and the range of 
formal discipline is necessary to render the dis- 
cussion of elective studies more precise and true 
to fact, and the scientific study of this question 

1 Royce, Outlines of Psychology, pp. 67-70. 



FORMAL DISCIPLINE 37 

may even yet yield vital and unexpected results." 
(Brown.) 1 

"Training in any exercise that requires skill 
undoubtedly increases more general habits of ac- 
curate perception and methods of eliminating use- 
less movements that are transferable to other 
movements with other parts of the body. So, too, 
with memory, in the usual logical learning the fac- 
tors involved are in large measure common to 
memories of related subjects. You cannot be sure 
that any fact is absolutely unrelated to any other, 
and so far as they are related, learning the one 
makes easier learning the other. In both rote and 
logical learning there are definite habits and 
capacities of attending to be acquired, and these 
may apparently be acquired in one field, and used 
in another. We have to do in memory, then, with 
a large number of fairly distinct physiological 
capacities, but their use has become so dependent 
upon habits common to the different capacities 
that they are functionally parts of a common 
whole. Training one part thus trains related 
parts, and the whole in some degree." (Pills- 
bury.) 2 



1 Brown (E. E.), Congress of Arts and Sciences, St. Louis, 1904, 
Vol. VIII, "Present Problems in the Theory of Education," p. 77. 

2 Pillsbury, Educational Review, June, 1908, "The Effects of Training 
on Memory," pp. 26, 27. 



OBSERVATIONS 

The following observations are those which 
seem to us to militate most strongly against the 
doctrine of formal discipline : 

i. The training of one part of the body re- 
sults in a specialized development of that part, 
rather than of other parts or of the body as a 
whole, except in so far as a generally increased 
circulation and metabolism increase the vigor of 
the whole organism. The way to train a particu- 
lar muscle or organ is through the proper exer- 
cise of that muscle or organ rather than of others. 
In so far as related muscles or organs are involved 
in the same training exercises, they will also be 
trained by these exercises. But muscles or organs 
cannot be trained unless they or the nerve centres 
controlling them have in whole or part under- 
gone exercise and training. Each one of us is 
more capable in those parts of the body that have 
been better trained in the course of our lives. And 
even these parts act better for some special pur- 
poses than for others, because they have been 
trained to act in these specific ways. 

2. The training of the mind in regard to one 
38 



OBSERVATIONS 39 

subject results in a specialized ability to deal with 
this subject, rather than with other subjects. In 
so far as other subjects are similar in matter or 
in method to the first subject, the mental ability 
to deal with this first subject can be used with the 
other subjects. But ability to deal with any subject 
cannot be developed unless the mind has been exer- 
cised directly with it or indirectly on account of 
some of its elements being included in the other 
subjects with which the mind has been directly ex- 
ercised. Furthermore, from the standpoint of 
psychophysics, mental exercise in connection with 
any part of the brain will tend to increase the cir- 
culation and metabolism in the brain as a whole, 
just as physical exercise in any part of the body 
will tend to increase the circulation and metabo- 
lism in the body as a whole; but this generally 
increased vitality is far different from the special- 
ized ability acquired through specific training. 

3. Most of us recognize that we are special- 
ized in our mental abilities, showing more accu- 
racy, concentration, reasoning, endurance, etc. in 
dealing with those matters with which we have 
had most to do. We know from experience that 
we cannot transfer these abilities to other matters 
without loss. We think better about some par- 
ticular things than others, we feel more keenly 



40 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

about some particular things than others, we do 
more easily some particular things than others. 
In many cases it is easy for us to trace out those 
past experiences that have produced these special- 
ized abilities; and on the other hand we can jus- 
tify our lack of ability in other lines by showing 
how little opportunity we have had to develop 
these other specialized abilities. We are more or 
less a bundle of specific abilities and of specific 
inabilities, doomed to our efficiencies and our in- 
efficiencies by the activities which have made out 
of our native tendencies whatever we are to-day. 

4. We also notice in those about us a similar 
particularization of ability to lines of activity 
which have become habitual. We notice this most 
strikingly in the narrow abilities of many special- 
ists (doctor, merchant, housekeeper, etc.), who 
appear at an increasing disadvantage the further 
they digress into fields dissimilar to their own. 
Tact in social intercourse consists largely in al- 
lowing our acquaintances to reveal and revel in 
their native or acquired special abilities and to 
hide and forget their special inabilities. The 
friend who thus emphasizes the sources of 
strength and overlooks the sources of weakness 
in others is sure to be popular. 

5. The business and professional world relies 



OBSERVATIONS 41 

more and more on the superiority of specialized 
ability resulting from special training. Men are 
thereby becoming more efficient specialized work- 
ers but less adaptable, less transferable, more 
dependent upon the specialized demand for their 
work. Thus is being produced an economic de- 
pendence which is almost fatalistic. The way to 
overcome this fatalism of specialization is not by 
claiming the transfer of acquired ability, a dogma 
that the employer and the public will not accept 
as a wise business principle. Either the ability 
of the specialist must be related in matter or in 
method to other abilities (and this is not often 
the case at present), or the specialist must be 
trained in the broader activities, if not in the de- 
tails, of two or more specialties. This is one of 
the arguments for manual training courses as 
preparation for industrial work of any kind. It 
is no exaggeration to say that the necessities of 
economic competition have shown the fallacy of 
the doctrine of formal discipline. 

6. The ability displayed by some people in 
two or more lines of activity may be due to their 
having been specially trained in these lines and not 
to a transfer of acquired ability from one activity 
to another. Or the activities may be so closely 
related that ability in one is in part ability in the 



42 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

other. Or these several abilities may be due to 
the general native ability of the person, resulting 
from the innate structure and vitality of the brain. 
There is often a failure to distinguish in thought 
between native ability, which is either general or 
special, and acquired ability, which is special. 
The former is due to the superior nature of the 
brain, in whole or in part; the latter is due to the 
action of stimuli upon a specific part of the brain, 
according to the nature of the stimuli as well as 
of the brain. No one doubts that some people 
have unusual native capacity for receiving and 
holding impressions, for sustaining close atten- 
tion, for making clear judgments, for exercising 
vigorous and precise muscular control, etc. A 
person may thus be talented in one or in several 
lines. His initial superiorities will render more 
efficient and rapid his development in one line of 
activity or in several; but, in the latter case, the 
development in a subsequent line of activity is not 
due to a previous development in a different line 
of activity, but to a similar native superiority of 
intra- or inter-cellular organization or metabolism 
in the different parts of the brain connected with 
the different lines of activity. The ability of 
school pupils in several studies is often used to 
support the belief in the transfer of acquired 



OBSERVATIONS 43 

ability from one subject to different subjects, 
whereas no such explanation seems needed or 
justifiable in these cases. 

7. Furthermore, the ability of pupils in one 
study after they have acquired ability in another 
study may be due to general growth processes at 
that period of physical and mental development, 
regardless of particular studies and acquired abili- 
ties. The different stages in the growth of a 
child represent the birth of new tendencies, in- 
terests, and abilities, which greatly affect his school 
work. This is often seen in high-school pupils, 
whose general adolescent development of second- 
ary sex characters and of the association centres 
of the brain will largely account for their increased 
ability in successive studies of different kinds. 
These factors of constitutional growth are gen- 
erally overlooked, not only in the curricula and 
methods used at different stages of growth, but 
also in our explanations of the progress made in 
school work at these different stages. 

8. The variations shown by the same pupils 
in their class standing in different studies are 
puzzling to the formal disciplinists. These varia- 
tions may be due to differences in application, in 
native ability, or in acquired ability for this or 
that particular work. In so far as they are due 



44 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

to acquired ability, the doctrine of transference 
does not seem to hold, for the abilities acquired 
in one study do not spread uniformly to other 
studies. The greater amount of uniformity often 
noticed in the class standing in related studies 
seems to show that in so far as studies are simi- 
lar there tends to be a similar ranking of the 
pupils in these studies. 

9. But what is more serious is the generally 
recognized fact that pupils who excel in school are 
often beaten in professional or business life by 
fellow-pupils who ranked below them in class 
standing. The school abilities acquired through 
school activities are not in these cases carried over 
to the environmental activities outside the school. 
This is due to the difference between the matter 
and the method of the two activities and to the 
consequent inability of the pupils to make success 
in the one issue into success in the other. If there 
were such a transfer of acquired ability as the 
doctrine of formal discipline implies, there 
would not be such a difference in the ranking of 
individuals in the two activities. 

10. Closely related to a recognition of this 
fact is the popular demand for more "practical" 
courses in the schools. This demand is based 
upon a belief, not only that the kind of training 



OBSERVATIONS 45 

derived from these courses is different from that 
derived from others, but that this kind of train- 
ing is the one needed for practical efficiency, be- 
cause it is derived from materials and methods 
similar to those used in practical life. The doc- 
trine of democracy in education and the doctrine 
of formal discipline cannot be well harmonized. 
When only the favored few "took" education, the 
doctrine could be cherished as a cultural ideal and 
the waste involved in its application could be 
overlooked or tolerated without economic hard- 
ship. But when the masses of limited means de- 
termined to educate their children, they ques- 
tioned some of the school's circuitous methods of 
promoting mental development and exerted 
their power to eliminate indirect and wasteful 
ineffectiveness in preparing boys and girls as soon 
as possible for independent service. This is one 
of the reasons why the doctrine of formal dis- 
cipline is retiring from the elementary schools 
and is showing signs of increasing discomfort in 
the secondary schools, as the latter become demo- 
cratic in sympathy and usefulness as they have 
become democratic in support and control. 

11. Finally, we notice that adherents of the 
doctrine of formal discipline shrink from carry- 
ing their doctrine to its logical conclusions, name- 



46 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

ly, the exact equivalence of studies for mental 
discipline or, if a distinction is made between 
them, the concentration on a single superior study 
for the training of a given power or set of 
powers. In practice, if not in theory, these ad- 
herents acknowledge a variation in training of a 
given power or set of powers as related to a 
variation in content of study. A case in point 
is the inconsistency of the Committee of Ten on 
Secondary School Studies in stating what seems 
to be a belief in the equivalence of studies and 
then specifying elaborately varied curricula, 
representing different phases of the environment, 
different subject-matter and method. Baker dis- 
sents from the doctrine of equivalence in his mi- 
nority report. Schurman seconds him in a maga- 
zine review, declaring that "the Committee of 
Ten, and some of the conferences as well, have 
fallen victim to that popular psychology which 
defines education merely as the training of the 
mental faculties." 1 Taylor, a member of the 
Committee, replies in an article of defence that 
the word "equivalence" was used "in relation to 
college requirements. The thought of the com- 
mittee was surely equivalence of results, in this 
aspect, rather than equivalence of value, intrin- 

1 Schurman, School Review, February, 1894, p. 93. 



OBSERVATIONS 47 

sieally considered." 1 This is not exactly the point 
at issue. Are studies equivalent for mental dis- 
cipline, even though we recognize their differ- 
ence "of value, intrinsically considered"? The 
practical influence of the Committee's report has 
been to strengthen the current belief in this dis- 
ciplinary equivalence, though the Committee's 
real intention is better shown by its suggestive 
curricula. 



Taylor, School Review, April, 1894, p. 196. 



EXPERIMENTS 

Space will not allow descriptions of all the ex- 
periments so far made, which furnish evidence 
in regard to the doctrine of formal discipline. 
Rather than give a brief summary of each experi- 
ment, we deem it more profitable to describe typi- 
cal and important ones, using as far as possible 
the words of those who conducted them. Care has 
been taken to describe experiments which seem to 
favor the doctrine of formal discipline, as well 
as those which seem to oppose it. The results 
of the other experiments are briefly stated in the 
summaries mentioned. We are not specially con- 
cerned with the large number of experiments on 
the effect of practice and the formtaion of habits 
in only one function. The reader is referred to 
the recent summaries of these by Ellison 1 and 
Bagley. 2 Our special concern is with experiments 
on the transfer of the effect of practice from one 
function to another. Summaries of most of these 



1 Ellison, Pedagogical Seminary, March, 1909, "The Acquisition of 
Technical Skill." 

2 Bagley, Psychological Bulletin, March, 1909, "The Psychology of 
School Practice." See also Thorndike, American Journal of Psychol- 
ogy, July, 1908, "The Effect of Practice in Case of a Purely Intellec- 
tual Function." 

48 



EXPERIMENTS 49 

experiments are given by Henderson, 1 Thorn- 
dike, 2 Bennett, 3 and Coover and Angell. 4 

Although the experimenters variously interpret 
the bearing of their results on the doctrine of 
formal discipline, they differ mainly as to the 
extent to which the effect of practice in one func- 
tion can be transferred to other functions having 
elements in common with it. This transfer re- 
sults in either improvement of or interference 
with the other functions, according to whether 
the common elements are used in a similar or in 
a different way in the associations of these func- 
tions as compared with those of the first. As 
some elements are common to many functions, 
practice with them results in abilities of wide 
usableness. This widespread transfer has caused 
many students to overlook or even deny the spe- 
cific character of the habits thus usable in many 
associations. Especially is this true in regard to 
elements of method, because they are usually 
common to more functions than are elements of 
subject-matter, the number of distinct methods 

1 Henderson, Education, May, 1909, "Formal Discipline from the 
Standpoint of Analytical and Experimental Psychology." 

2 Thorndike, Educational Psychology, Chap. VIII, "The Influence of 
Special Forms of Training Upon More General Abilities." 

3 Bennett, Formal Discipline, Columbia University. Has a bibliography 
of uneven value. 

*Coover and Angell (F.), American Journal of Psychology, July, 1907, 
"General Practice Effect of Special Exercise." 



50 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

being more limited and their range and applicabil- 
ity wider. 

There have been several experiments on cross- 
education, or the improvement in an activity, in- 
volving one part of the body, as the result of im- 
provement through practice in a similar activity, 
involving a bilaterally symmetrical part of the 
body. The results of most of these experiments 
have been summarized by Davis 1 and the writers 
previously mentioned. The improvement in the 
second activity in such experiments can be ex- 
plained as due to two causes. In the first place, 
both activities are very similar and probably in- 
volve in part the same centres in the nervous sys- 
tem. Though bilaterally symmetrical parts of 
the body are controlled in part through cortical 
centres in different hemispheres, they are also 
probably controlled in part through lower centres 
which serve for both sides of the body. The im- 
provement in the second activity is therefore 
probably due to the use in part of the same 
centres in both activities. In the second place, the 
improvement is due to the working out, in con- 
nection with the first activity, of a method of how 
to perform the act, and then to the use of this 

1 Davis, Yale Physchological Studies, 1898, "Researches Upon Cross- 
Education," pp. 6-50. 



EXPERIMENTS 51 

method in guiding the second activity. The use 
of this method in guiding the second activity is as 
different from the transfer of acquired ability as 
the knowledge of how to do is different from the 
ability to do. Such knowledge may lead to abil- 
ity, but in itself it is not ability. (See our later 
discussion of both these points.) The first two 
experiments here described represent the methods 
and results of all those on cross-education. 

1. The following experiments were conducted 
by Smith at Yale University, under the direction 
of Scripture: — 

"The measure of accuracy was the ability to 
insert the needle into a single hole 0.1285 inches 
in diameter. The vertical metal plate containing 
the hole was placed directly in front of the ob- 
server; the right fore-arm was rested on the edge 
of the table; the stick was grasped like a pencil 
and by a steady movement of the hand and wrist 
the metal point was inserted in the hole. Any 
contact of the point against the side of the hole 
was counted an error. The per cent, of success- 
ful insertions was considered the measure of 
accuracy 

"The first set consisted of twenty experiments 
with the left hand; the result was 50 per cent, of 
successful trials. Immediately thereafter twenty 



52 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

experiments were made with the right hand, with 
a result of 60 per cent, of successful trials. On 
the following day and on each successive day two 
hundred experiments were taken with the right 
hand, the same conditions in regard to time, bod- 
ily condition and position in making the experi- 
ments being maintained as far as possible. The 
percentage of successful trials ran as follows: 

61, 64, 6s, 75> 74> 75> 82 > 79> 7 8 > 88 - 

"On the 10th day the left hand was tested with 
twenty experiments as before, with 76 per cent, 
of successful trials, thus showing an increase of 
twenty-six per cent, without practice in the time 
during which the right hand had gained as shown 

by the figures above 

"From the results of these two thousand ex- 
periments the following conclusions seem justi- 
fied: 

(1.) Steadiness of movement can be increased 
by practice. 

(2.) This increase of steadiness is not limited 
to the control of the muscles immediately 
trained but affects the control of the corres- 
ponding muscles on the opposite side of 
the body. 

(3.) This training seems to be of a psychical 



EXPERIMENTS 53 

rather than of a physical order and to lie 

principally in steadiness of attention." 1 

2. The following experiments were conducted 

by Davis with six graduate students at Yale 

University : 2 

"At the initial test the subject's clothing was 
removed from the upper part of his body. His 
weight was then taken and his strength of fore- 
arm, or grip, measured by the usual spring dyna- 
mometer. The following measurements were 
then made: right and left upper arm both flexed 
and extended; right and left forearm with and 
without the hand clenched. These measurements 
were taken at the largest circumferences of the 
arm above and below the elbow. The weight (a 
i 1 /* kilo, dumbbell) was then given to the subject, 
who was instructed to lift it from a position 
where the arm hangs extended downward and 
the weight is supported from the shoulder, to one 
where the arm is flexed and the weight close to 
the shoulder. In this movement the elbow re- 
mains stationary. Hence, to accomplish this act, 
the biceps is employed almost wholly, though the 
muscles of the forearm are also used to a lesser 

1 Scripture, Smith, and Brown, Yale Psychological Studies, 1894, "On 
the Education of Muscular Control and Ppwer, pp. 115-118. 

2 Davis, Yale Psychological Studies, 1898, pp. 18-29. See other experi- 
ments by Davis. 



54 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 
extent in gripping the dumbbell. This gripping 
was intensified toward the end of the test, when 
the subject became fatigued 

"The subject then entered upon a practice ex- 
tending from two to four weeks ; this consisted in 
simple flexions of the right arm with the 
weight 

"At the final test the same data were obtained 
in the same way and under the same conditions as 
at the initial test. Additional data were also ob- 
tained." 

The following summary gives the results of 
several tests made of the right and the left arm, 
before and after practice of the right arm with 
the dumbbell. The six subjects averaged 26^2 
years of age, 1^/2 days of practice, and 310 flex- 
ions of the right arm in daily practice. The aver- 
age girth gain in mm. of biceps, contracted, was 
— right 6 l /3 f left 2%; the average girth gain of 
forearm, contracted, was — right 4%, left 2%; 
the average gain in number of flexions made with 
the dumbbell was — right 757, left 178; the aver- 
age gain in strength of grip as measured by the 
dynamometer, in kilos, was — right 5.56, left 
5.41. 

The author gives the following conclusions 



EXPERIMENTS 55 

from his own experiments and those made by 
others : 

"a. The effects of exercise may be trans- 
ferred to a greater or less degree from the parts 
practiced to other parts of the body. This trans- 
ference is greatest to symmetrical and closely re- 
lated parts. 

"b. There is a close connection between dif- 
ferent parts of the muscular system through ner- 
vous means. This connection is closer between 
parts related in function or in position. 

"c. Will power and attention are educated by 
physical training. When developed by any spe- 
cial act they are developed for all other acts. 

"With conclusions b and c established the ex- 
planation of the transference is probably reached. 
There is no doubt that the most important effects 
of muscular practice are central rather than peri- 
pheral. The central effects may be distinguished 
as : ( 1 ) those dependent on the development of 
motor centres, that is, their improvement through 
exercise; (2) those dependent on the develop- 
ment of psychical factors, notably attention and 
will power. Of these two effects we would em- 
phasize the first as the most important." 1 

3. The following experiments were conducted 

1 Davis, Yale Psychological Studies, 1898, pp. 49, 50. 



56 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

by Thorndike and Woodworth at Columbia Uni- 
versity : 

"Individuals practiced estimating the areas of 
rectangles from 10 to ioo sq. cm. in size until 
a very marked improvement was attained. The 
improvement in accuracy for areas of the same 
size but of different shape due to this training was 
only 44 per cent, as great as that for areas of 
the same shape and size. For areas of the same 
shape but from 140-300 sq. cm. in size the im- 
provement was 30 per cent, as great. For areas 
of different shape and form 140-400 sq. cm. in 
size the improvement was 52 per cent, as great. 

"Training in estimating weights of from 40- 
120 grams resulted in only 39 per cent, as much 
improvement in estimating weights from 120 to 
1800 grams. Training in estimating lines from 
.5 to 1.5 inches long (resulting in a reduction of 
error to 25 per cent, of the initial amount) re- 
sulted in no improvement in the estimation of 
lines 6-12 inches long. 

"Training in perceiving words containing e and 
s gave a certain amount of improvement in speed 
and accuracy in that special ability. In the ability 
to perceive words containing i and t, s and p, c 
and a, e and r, a and n, 1 and o, misspelled words 
and A's, there was an improvement of only 39 per 



EXPERIMENTS 57 

cent, as much as in the ability specially trained, 
and in accuracy of only 25 per cent, as much. 
Training in perceiving English verbs gave a re- 
duction in time of nearly 21 per cent, and of 
omissions of 70 per cent. The ability to perceive 
other parts of speech showed a reduction in time 
of 3 per cent., but an increase in omissions of 
over 100 per cent." 1 

4. The following experiments were conducted 
by Squire and others at the Montana State Nor- 
mal College : 

"Careful experiments were undertaken to de- 
termine whether the habit of producing neat 
papers in arithmetic will function with reference 
to neat written work in other studies; the tests 
were confined to the intermediate grades. The 
results are almost startling in their failure to 
show the slightest improvement in language and 
spelling papers, although the improvement in the 
arithmetic papers was noticeable from the very 
first." 2 

5. The following experiment was conducted 
by Judd at Yale University: 



1 Thorndike, Educational Psychology, p. 90. These experiments are 
described in detail in three articles in the Psychological Review, 1901. 
They have been criticised by Coover and Angell (F.), American Journal 
of Psychology, July, 1907, p. 330. 

2 Bagley, Educative Process, p. 208. 



58 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

"A person who was to be tested was seated in 
such a position that his right hand and arm were 
entirely hidden from view by a large screen. 
Whatever he did with this right hand would, 
therefore, be unseen by him. On the left side of 
the screen and in full view, nine different lines 
were shown in succession, and he was required to 
place a pencil held in the unseen right hand in the 
direction indicated by the several lines seen be- 
fore him. The errors made in placing the pencil 
were accurately measured and recorded. A 
standard of comparison was thus gained by which 
all later results could be valued. The next step 
in the experiment was to train the person being 
tested to more accurate localization of one special 
line, which for purposes of our description we 
may call No. 5. With this one line, No. 5, the 
reactor was given fuller visual experience and 
the error which he at first made with this line 
gradually disappeared. After this clear improve- 
ment with No. 5 the original conditions were re- 
stored, and the reactor was again tested as at 
first with all nine lines. Every line in the series 
was effected. This means that there had been a 
transfer of effects under the conditions of the 
training described. 

"This, however, was not all. Some of the 



EXPERIMENTS 59 

lines had shown in the first series of tests an error 
in the same direction as line No. 5 ; others showed 
an error in the opposite direction. The transfer 
of practice differed in the two kinds of cases in 
that those lines which had a like error with No. 
5 improved with No. 5, while the lines which had 
errors in the opposite direction to No. 5 grew 
worse as a result of practice with No. 5. The 
transfer of practice was no less real in the case 
of the lines which increased in error than in the 
case of the lines which improved. Both kinds of 
cases show that the functions involved are inter- 
dependent, and that transfer of practice is a com- 
plex process which must be studied from a variety 
of points of view if its different modes of opera- 
tion are to be fully understood. Joint improve- 
ment is only one of the possible forms of trans- 
fer; reciprocal interference is just as significant a 
type of transfer as is joint improvement. 

u The experiment was carried a step further. 
After practice with No. 5, a new practice series 
was instituted with another line, which we may 
designate as No. 2. It was found that the person 
being tested was now very much less affected by 
practice with No. 2 than he had been during the 
first practice series with No. 5. The amount of 
practice given with No. 2 was much greater in 



60 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

quantity and more radical in type, but the reactor 
remained relatively unaffected. This means, of 
course, that when the reactor first came to the ex- 
periment he was open to all kinds of suggestions. 
He was in the habit-forming attitude; he easily 
took on the effects of practice. But after the 
training which he received with line No. 5, he was 
less capable of acquiring new adjustments; he was 
no longer in the habit-forming attitude. 

"This is a third phase of transfer of practice. 
It is no less significant than joint improvement or 
reciprocal interference, for surely any influence 
which renders an observer immune to the effects 
of new practice is not to be overlooked in dis- 
cussing the relations of various forms of experi- 
ence to each other. The closing up of possibili- 
ties of future practice is much more important a 
consequence of any practice series than the direct 
transfer of effects to other functions." 1 

6. Of the few experiments on the transfer of 
the effects of memory practice, only one is de- 
scribed here in full. But mention should be made 
in passing of the experiments by James "to see 
whether a certain amount of daily training in 



1 Judd, Educational Review. June, 1908, "The Relation of Special 
Training to General Intelligence," pp. 28-30. See other experiments 
outlined in same article and the general conclusions drawn from them. 



EXPERIMENTS 61 

learning poetry by heart will shorten the time it 
takes to learn an entirely different kind of 
poetry." The results showed very little improve- 
ment in the second case ; and the author concludes 
that "all improvement of memory consists in the 
improvement of one's habitual methods of re- 
cording facts." 1 Mention should also be made of 
the experiments by Ebert and Meumann on the 
transfer of acquired ability in memorizing 
syllables to ability in memorizing other syl- 
lables, stanzas, prose sentences, visual signs, etc. 
The amount of transfer noticed in these experi- 
ments was probably due to the similarity of the 
material used in the different tests and to the de- 
velopment of better methods of memorizing. 
The authors suggest, however, that there must 
have been some general ability developed by this 
specific training. 2 

The following experiments were conducted by 
Winch with London school girls: 3 

I. "The first series of experiments was made 
with girls of the average age of 13 years. The 
first step was to divide the children into two 



parties, Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 666, 667. 

2 Ebert and Meumann, Archiv fur die Gesamte Psychologie, IV Band, 
1. u. 2. Heft, 1904, pp. 1-232. 

s Winch, British Journal of Psychology, January, 1908, "The Transfer 
of Improvement in Memory in School-Children," pp. 284-293. 



62 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

groups of equal ability as to memory. This was 
done, partly on an actual test and partly on the 
opinion of the class teacher. The test set was a 
passage from a historical reading-book, which 
was not in the ordinary way accessible to children 
of this class. Ten minutes were allowed for 
memorizing; the work was mainly visual, articu- 
lation, however, being permitted, provided that 
it was not audible. The girls were then required 
to reproduce in writing as much as they could 
remember, fifteen minutes being allowed for this. 
One mark was allowed for each word rightly re- 
membered and correctly placed. There were 
ninety-eight words in the exercise. 

"With the aid of the teacher, the girls were 
now placed in two equal groups. The members 
of the A group, during the next week or two, were 
practised in learning poetry, the B group mean- 
while working sums. With this exception, the 
school work of the two sections was the same 
during the progress of the experiment. After 
four practice exercises had been worked by group 
A, the two groups were placed together and a 
final test given in history. The time allowed for 
each test and exercise and the method of marking 
were the same in all cases. The general result 
may be more clearly indicated by the following 



EXPERIMENTS 63 

summary, showing the pupils arranged in sections 
according to the marks they obtained in the pre- 
liminary test in history and giving the average 
marks of the different sections in both the pre- 
liminary and the final history tests. 



GROUP 

Marks in 
preliminary test. 


A 

Pre- 
No. of liminary 
children, test. 


Final 

test. 


GROUP B 
Pre- 

No. of liminary 
children, test. 


Final 
test. 


Full marks 


3 


98.0 


i33-o 


2 


98.0 


I3I.0 


95-98 


5 


96.4 


130.6 


7 


96.0 


121. 1 


90-95 


4 


9i-5. 


123.2 


3 


91.0 


III. 6 


80-90 


2 


82.0 


II3-5 


2 


85.0 


92.O 


Below 80 


3 


63-6 


94-3 


3 


62.0 


87.O 



II. "A second series of experiments was 
made in another school, with girls of the average 
age of 13 years 3 months. The whole class, as 
in the previous school, was divided into two ap- 
proximately equal groups, and one was practised 
in memory exercises, and the other not. The 
preliminary and final tests were, however, exer- 
cises in geography instead of history as in the 
former school; and the poetical extracts given 
were simpler in meaning. Group B was occupied 
in writing whilst Group A was memorizing. The 
time allowed for memorizing and the method of 
marking were as before. 



6 4 



MENTAL DISCIPLINE 



GROUP A GROUP B 

Pre- Pre- 

Marks in No. of liminary Final No. of liminary Final 

preliminary test. children, test. test. children, test. test. 



90 and over 
85.90 

75-85 
Below 75 



90.3 98.6 

88.0 92.0 

80.0 94.6 

71.6 81.0 




III. "A third series of experiments was car- 
ried out in a third school, with girls of the aver- 
age age of 12 years 8 months. The general 
scheme of tests and exercises resembled that of 
the two previous experiments, history passages 
being used for the preliminary and the final tests. 



GROUP A 






GROUP B 




Marks in 


Pre- 




Pre- 




preliminary No. of 


liminary 


Final 


No. of liminary 


Final 


test. children. 


test. 


test. 


children. test. 


test. 



98-108 7 103.8 104.6 

68-98 8 84.5 77.3 

48-68 8 58.3 64.0 

0-48 4 28.5 64.7 



7 102.6 100.6 

8 82.5 64.3 
7 58.8 46.7 
5 27.4 41.6 



"The conclusion from these three series of ex- 
periments seems definite and clear. Improve- 
ment, gained by practice in memorizing one sub- 
ject of instruction, is transferred to memory work 
in other subjects whose nature is certainly diverse 



EXPERIMENTS 65 

from that in which the improvement was gained. 

"This, at least, is true as far as children of 
these ages and attainments are concerned. I ex- 
pressly add this limitation as to age, for infer- 
ences from adult psychology to child psychology 
and to pedagogical practice are extremely unsafe, 
and I am anxious to avoid the opposite error." 

7. The following experiment was conducted at 
the Speyer School, Teachers College, with sixteen 
children of about eleven years old. The purpose 
was to test the effect of acquired ability to dis- 
criminate between shades of blue upon the ability 
to discriminate between shades of red, of yellow 
and green, and black and orange. The great 
transfer of ability shown by the experiment was 
probably proportionate to the similarity between 
the test with blue and those with the other colors. 
The amount of error was calculated according 
to the grade of difference between the two shades 
used in each experiment, which the children failed 
to recognize. The results are given in averages, 
before and after the training with shades of blue. 1 

Tests with red and white. 
Boys. Before 4.5 4.5 3.0 3.2 2.3 

After .6 .7 .9 

1 Bennett, Formal Discipline, Columbia University, pp. 59-62. See 
other experiments reported in this thesis. 



66 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

Girls. Before 3.5 6.0 4.2 3.4 2.4 

After .48 .75 .65 

Tests with yellow and green. 
Boys. Before 6.7 5.3 4.0 

After 2.0 2.0 1.3 3.0 

Girls. Before 5.0 5.2 5.0 5.1 

After 2.8 2.6 1.7 1.7 2.1 

Tests with black and orange. 
Boys. Before 3.0 2.8 3.4 

After 1.2 1.6 .8 .9 1.0 

Girls. Before 2.7 2.7 2.2 

After 1.8 1.3 .9 .5 .5 

8. The following experiment was conducted 
by Coover and Angell: — 

"Four reagents were trained in discrimination 
of intensities of sound for 17 days during an in- 
terval of 57. Each reagent made 40 judgments 
in each day's training. 

"Before and after training the reagents were 
tested in the discrimination of shades of gray, 
each test consisting of three series, each containing 
35 judgments, delivered on 3 separate days 

"All the test reagents with one exception show 
? gain in Right and loss in Undecided judgments 
after training The per cent, of gain for the 



EXPERIMENTS 67 

4 test reagents was 4, 4, 6, 6, o, o, and 27, 5, 
making an average of 9, 1 

"Improvement seems to consist of divesting the 
essential process of the unessential factors, free- 
ing judgments from illusions, to which the un- 
necessary and often fantastic imagery gives rise, 
and of obtaining a uniform state of attention 
which is less than a maximum 

"Our conclusion from the experiment, there- 
fore, is that efficiency of sensible discrimination 
acquired by training with sound stimuli has been 
transferred to the efficiency of discriminating 
brightness stimuli, and that the factors in this 
transfer are due in great part to habituation and 
to a more economic adaptation of attention, i. e., 
are general rather than specific in character." 1 

9. The following experiments were conducted 
by the Dartmouth Pedagogical Department, un- 
der the direction of Lewis: — 

"First, two test papers were prepared, one con- 
taining originals in geometry and the other ques- 
tions in practical reasoning." The papers are 
given in the article from which these extracts are 
taken. Three questions were given in each paper. 



a Coover and Angell (F.), American Journal of Psychology, July, 1907, 
"General Practice Effect of Special Exercise." See also the description 
of their inconclusive experiment on card-sorting and typewriter reac- 
tions. 



68 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

The second paper dealt with the value of high 
school education to the individual and to the com- 
munity. "These tests were submitted to twenty- 
four different groups of high-school pupils. The 
students of each group belonged to the same class 
and were on an equality with respect to mathema- 
ical preparation. Each group took both tests. 
The results of these tests were carefully corrected 
and the pupils of each group arranged in two 
series, the first according to their ranking in 
mathematical and the second according to their 
ranking in practical reasoning. 

"If we take the first five mathematical reasoners 
from each of the twenty-four groups, we have in 
all one hundred and twenty pupils most excellent 
in mathematical reasoning. Of this number 
seventy-six, or 63 per cent., are at the foot of the 
practical reasoning series, conspicuous for their 
inefficiency in practical reasoning. Of the num- 
ber of pupils at the foot of the mathematical rea- 
soning series, fifty-seven, or 47 per cent., are con- 
spicuous for their position at the head of the 
practical reasoning series. 

"As a supplementary test, and one precisely the 
same in principle, one man examined the records 
of Dartmouth students who had taken mathe- 
matics and certain law courses which required a 



EXPERIMENTS 69 

good deal of reasoning. The records for ten 
different classes were examined, and tables were 
formed as in the previous test. 

"The results of this test were found to be 
strikingly parallel to those of the earlier test. 
Fifty per cent, of the best students in law were 
conspicuous for their poor showing in mathema- 
tics; and 42 per cent, of those poorest in law 
stood at the head of the series in mathematics." 1 

10. Similar experiments were conducted by 
Collins at the State Normal School, Stevens 
Point, Wis., to disprove the extreme results of the 
Dartmouth experiments as to the disparity be- 
tween ability in mathematics and ability in other 
subjects. His conclusions are thus summed up: 
"With the exception of about 20 to 25 per cent, 
of erratic people, those good in mathematics are 
good in other subjects, those of average ability in 
mathematics are of average ability in other sub- 
jects, and those poor in mathematics are poor 
in other subjects." 2 Collins explains his results 
by the "native endowment" of those examined 
and by the "quite general application" of the 

1 Lewis, School Review, April 1905, "A Study in Formal Discipline," 
pp. 289-291. 

2 Collins, School Review, October, 1906, p. 607. The conclusions of 
Lewis are also questioned by Kirkpatrick in the same number of the 
School Review, though Kirkpatrick states his belief in the specific char- 
acter of mental discipline. 



;o MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

abilities gained from mathematical training. 
Therefore, he does not argue for the doctrine of 
formal discipline, though his choice of words is 
sometimes confusing as to his attitude. While 
offsetting the extremes of the Dartmouth results, 
he does not invalidate the general conclusions to 
be drawn from them. 

ii. The value of the Dartmouth conclusions 
have been more seriously challenged by Rietz and 
Shade, as the result of a recent statistical investi- 
gation made by them at the University of Illinois. 
The reader is referred to their pamphlet for ex- 
planation of their methods. 1 Coefficients of cor- 
relation were computed for the grades of several 
hundred students in mathematics, foreign lan- 
guages, and elementary science (chemistry, bot- 
any, and geology). The conclusions of this in- 
vestigation are stated in the following coefficients 
of correlation, with their probable errors: for 
mathematics and foreign languages, r=o.^6 — 
0.015 or +0.015; for mathematics and natural 
science, r=o.440 — 0.015 or +0.015. "Two 
characters are said to be correlated if to a 
selected series of sizes of the one, there cor- 
respond sizes of the other whose mean values 



1 Rietz and Shade, Correlation of Efficiency in Mathematics and Effi- 
ciency in Other Subjects, University of Illinois, pp. 20. 



EXPERIMENTS 71 

are functions of the selected values." "The 
probable error in any result may be defined 
as that deviation from the determined value, on 
either side, such that it is an even wager that 
the true value lies within this amount of the de- 
termined value." Although the coefficients of cor- 
relation are surprisingly small, the authors claim 
to be "justified in saying that efficiency in mathe- 
matics and efficiency in foreign languages go to- 
gether in general to a high degree, and that to 
substantially the same extent do efficiency in 
mathematics and in natural sciences go together." 
As this investigation is typical of others, it 
deserves further discussion. Even if the above 
coefficients of correlation were considerably 
greater than they are, we do not believe that 
they would give strength to the doctrine of formal 
discipline (as the authors would have us believe), 
because they do not prove that the ability derived 
from the study of mathematics is transferred to 
and thereby increases the abilities derived from 
the study of foreign languages or natural science, 
or vice versa. The way to prove the transfer of 
acquired ability from one subject to another is 
(1) to measure the ability in each subject at the 
beginning of the test, (2) to concentrate on in- 
creasing the ability in one of the subjects, and 



72 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

then (3) to measure again the ability in the other 
subject to see if there has been any increase fol- 
lowing the increase made in the subject con- 
centrated upon. The investigations by Rietz and 
Shade do not meet any of these requirements. 
In the first place, there is no test, comparative or 
otherwise, of increase of ability in the given sub- 
jects. It must also be remembered that most, 
though not all, of the courses were taken simul- 
taneously, not successively. In the second place, 
there is not the slightest proof that the marks in 
the different subjects had any relation of cause or 
effect to each other. A student might have re- 
ceived exactly the same marks in two subjects 
without there having been any relation of cause 
or effect between them. In the third place, the 
pamphlet states that there had been secondary 
school training in the different subjects or in allied 
subjects. This specific preparation in each of the 
subjects, based upon the native ability or lack of 
ability of the student, was sufficient to account for 
the correlation of the marks in the given subjects, 
without any transfer of ability from one to the 
other. But if there really were any transfer, it 
could easily be explained by the common elements 
in the given subjects. We conclude, therefore, 
that this investigation and others like it may in- 



EXPERIMENTS 73 

validate the extremes of the Dartmouth results 
but that they have little or no value as a support 
to the doctrine of formal discipline. 

Similar investigations on the correlation of abil- 
ities furnish proof against the doctrine of formal 
discipline, by showing far greater differences be- 
tween abilities than the doctrine would lead us to 
expect. Several of these investigations have been 
outlined by Thorndike. 1 We are inclined to be- 
lieve that the investigation by Rietz and Shade 
should be classed along with these. 

Although a small amount of correlation neces- 
sarily shows that there has been little transfer of 
ability, even a large amount of correlation does 
not necessarily show that there has been great 
transfer of ability. In the latter case, proof must 
be shown that the increased correlation is due to 
this transfer and not to native ability or to ac- 
quired ability in both subjects. The burden of 
proof rests upon those who have a positive cor- 
relation to explain, but a negative correlation is 
sufficient proof in itself of the absence of trans- 
ferred ability. "Finding correlation between 
two functions need not mean that improve- 

1 Thorndike, Educational Psychology, Chap. IV, "The Relationship 
Between Mental Traits." See also the account of experiments by Peter- 
son, Psychological Review, September, 1908, "Correlation of Certain 
Mental Traits in Normal School Students." 



74 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

merit in one has brought about increased efficiency 
in the other. But the absence of correlation does 
mean the opposite." (Thorndike and Wood- 
worth. ) * 

12. The following experiments with school 
children were conducted by Norsworthy to test 
the amount of correlation between selected 
functions: 

"Tests were given in multiplication, in observ- 
ing misspelled words, in marking words con- 
taining e and r, in observing the word "boy" 
wherever it occurred, and in marking semi-circles 
scattered amongst all sorts of geometrical forms. 
Differences of the same individual had been 
measured in arithmetic, spelling, and in ability to 
mark certain forms. One of them was taken as 
a standard and the other tests correlated with it. 

"The conclusions reached from this study are 
in line with those already quoted, namely, that it 
seems probable that certain functions which are 
of importance in school work, such as quickness 
in arithmetic, accuracy in spelling, attention to 
forms, etc., are highly specialized and not second- 
ary results of some general function Ac- 
curacy in spelling is independent of accuracy in 

1 Thorndike and Woodworth, Psychological Review, May, 1901, "The 
Influence of Improvement in One Mental Function Upon the Efficiency 
of Other Functions," p. 248. 



EXPERIMENTS 75 

multiplication, and quickness in arithmetic is not 
found with quickness in marking misspelled 
words; ability to pick out the word boy on a 
printed page is no guarantee that the child will 
be able to pick out a geometrical form with as 
great ease and accuracy." 1 

13. The last experiment to be mentioned here 
is that conducted by Stone to determine the arith- 
metical abilities of the sixth-grade pupils in twen- 
ty-six schools. The pupils were given under 
similar conditions the same problems in "funda- 
mentals" (addition, subtraction, multiplication, 
division) and in "reasoning" (practical applica- 
tion of the fundamental operations). The re- 
sults showed marked variation of pupils in (1) 
ability in fundamentals as compared with ability 
in reasoning and (2) ability in any one of the 
four fundamentals as compared with any of the 
other three. These variations are shown by the 
coefficients of correlation between these abilities. 
The author concludes that "the net result of the 
arithmetic work of the first six years is several 
products rather than a product. The study of 
arithmetic makes demands on a plurality of abil- 
ities. Hence it is inaccurate to speak of the arith- 



1 Norsworthy, New York Teachers' Monographs, December, 1902, 
"Formal Training," pp. 98, 99. 



76 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

metical ability of pupils, and it is bad educational 
practice to treat the subject as though it were a 
unity instead of a plurality." 1 These results and 
conclusions are similar to those of a less extended 
study of arithmetical abilities by Fox and Thorn- 
dike. 2 As the author suggests, such a conclusion 
antagonizes the doctrine of formal discipline be- 
cause it disproves the complete transfer of abil- 
ities from one phase of the same study to another. 
Even within the limits of the same study there are 
variations in abilities, according to the nature of 
the different activities involved in the study; even 
within the limits of the same study there is a de- 
crease in the transfer of abilities, proportionate to 
the difference in the activities involved in the 
study. 



1 Stone, Arithmetical Abilities, Teachers College, p. 43. 
3 Thorndike, Educational Psychology, p. 39. 



LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION 

The strongest theoretical objection to the doc- 
trine of formal discipline is implied in the theory 
of psychophysical parallelism, which is defined 
by Stout and Baldwin as "the affirmation that 
conscious process varies concomitantly with 
synchronous process in the nervous system, 
whether the two processes have a direct casual re- 
lation or not". 1 It seems reasonable to draw from 
this theory the hypothesis that for every particu- 
lar state of consciousness there is a concomitant 
stimulation of particular groups of cells in the 
cerebral cortex. Of course, it is recognized that 
cortical activity is not limited to these particular 
groups of cells in relation to a particular state of 
consciousness, for consciousness at any moment is 
related to an equilibrium of activity in the cortex 
as a whole; but it is held that cortical activity 
centers in these groups synchronously with the 
particular state of consciousness. 2 

If the afore-mentioned hypothesis is true, it 

1 Stout and Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, 
"Parallelism." 

2 See Angell (J. R.), Psychology, p. 44; Herrick, Dictionary of Phil- 
osophy and Psychology, "Localization." 

77 



78 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

follows that, as every stimulus modifies the par- 
ticular groups of cells stimulated in such a way as 
to make the succeeding stimulations of those cells 
easier (the law of habit formation), a succession 
of similar states of conscious control of activity 
synchronizes with a succession of stimulations of 
particular groups of cells in the cerebral cortex 
and of connecting cells in other parts of the central 
nervous system. The stimulations so modify 
these groups of cells as to produce the physiologi- 
cal counterpart of a particular acquired ability. 
If, in the course of time, the acquired ability be- 
comes so great as to require little or no conscious 
control and to approach the automatism of a 
habit, its particularity becomes even more decided, 
because the habit will be more and more difficult 
to modify in other directions. Acquired abilities 
and habits are particular or specific, on account of 
their relation to modifications of particular 
groups of cells. As was previously suggested in 
discussing the experiments upon cross-education, 
activities which are in part controlled through dif- 
ferent centres in the cerebral cortex may also be 
in part controlled by the same centres in other 
parts of the nervous system. The only way to get 
the benefit of previous training is through a use of 
the modified cells, all or some, in former associa- 



LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION 79 

tions or in new associations. The extent of the 
benefit derived is proportionate to the number of 
the previously modified cells used and to the ex- 
tent of the modifications in the cells used. How- 
ever, if effort is made to use these modified cells 
in different ways in different associations, the ten- 
dency of the stimulation of these cells to issue into 
activity in the former way and association may in- 
terfere with the latter. This interference will be 
proportionate to the difference and the compara- 
tive strength of the two associations. 1 

The doctrine of formal discipline, on the other 
hand, seems to imply that the modifications pro- 
duced by successive similar stimulations and ac- 
tivities are not localized in particular groups of 
cells but are distributed to many different groups 
and can be used in connection with entirely dif- 
ferent activities. Or, the doctrine might imply 
that these modifications are localized in particular 
groups of cells but that the cells with these modifi- 
cations can be used again with entirely different 
activities. Both of these implications seem 
untenable. 

Mental discipline results from such a modifica- 
tion of particular groups of cells as will render 

1 See especially Bergstrom, American Journal of Psychology, June, 
1894, "The Relation of the Interference to the Practice Effect of an 
Association." 



80 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

future action along specific lines easier and more 
efficient. The aim of education is the control and 
direction of activity in the pursuit of certain ideal 
ends, and this aim is realized through discipline 
in the control and direction of activity toward 
these ends. In other words, the individual is 
educated through such responses to specific stimuli 
as will modify the particular groups of cells that 
he will use in adjustment to the important phases 
of his environment. These modified cells will 
represent the subject-matter of activity, the con- 
tent in regard to which the activity has been con- 
trolled and directed, or the method of activity, 
the form in which the activity has been controlled 
and directed. Though these cells can be used 
again in new associations of subject matter or of 
method and the benefit of the previous modifica- 
tions can thus be transfered to a partially new ac- 
tivity in so far as it makes use of these cells, there 
is a probability that such new associations and new 
uses of these modified cells will not be made unless 
the associations are worked out or suggested by 
or for the individual. The cells representing sub- 
ject-matter may not be the same as those repre- 
senting method in regard to this subject-matter, 
but the close association formed by practice be- 
tween the two make it difficult to use the one with- 



LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION 81 

out the other. They tend to form a closed cir- 
cuit. Therefore, it is necessary in education to 
break or enlarge this circuit by using in whole or 
in part the same subject-matter in association with 
different methods, and by using in whole or in 
part the same methods in association with dif- 
ferent subject-matter. And even when several as- 
sociations have thus been worked out or suggested, 
there is a tendency for the older or stronger asso- 
ciations to assert themselves and interfere with 
the newer or weaker associations, especially if 
the latter are radically different from the former. 
Consequently, effort should be made to develop 
as the strongest associations between specific sub- 
ject-matter and specific method those that are of 
the most environmental value. 

Experiments have shown that children break 
up old associations and form new ones more easily 
than do adults. Therefore they show more quickly 
and to a greater extent the transfer of the effects 
of practice from one association to another. The 
common elements in the two functions are more 
readily usable in both. This is due to the greater 
plasticity of the nervous system of children, to 
their limited experience, and consequently to the 
smaller degree of fixity and strength of the earlier 
associations. This fact is of great importance in 



82 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

the education of the young, because childhood 
and youth are the golden periods for associating 
and using the elements, modified by special train- 
ing, in the various functions in which the transfer 
of the effects of practice will be of great value. 

Most modifications of the doctrine of formal 
discipline are based upon some theory of localiza- 
tion. But Thorndike is the only author who car- 
ries this theory to its extreme conclusion: "There 
seems to be no structural arrangement by which 
the changes wrought by practice in one set of 
nerve cells could infect other cells with a similar 
quality." "By identical elements [in two func- 
tions] are meant mental processes which have the 
same cell action in the brain as their physical cor- 
relate." 1 O'Shea gives in one sentence a similar but 
more cautious reason for modifying the formalist 
doctrine : "We should infer from current theory 
respecting the methods of neural action, that exer- 
cise of any special kind would furrow out channels 
for the discharge of energy in support of just this 
kind of activity, but not an activity of a different 
sort."" Wardlaw has expressed the same idea 
in a striking analogy: "If I have broken a path 
through the weeds, I can cross that field more 

1 Thorndike, Educational Psychology, pp. 30, 81. 

2 O'Shea, Dynamic Factors in Education, p. 75. 



LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION 83 

easily thereafter. This fact does not mean that 
the muscles of my legs are bigger than before, but 
simply that I am using the same path again — not 
that I have more strength to work with, but that 
there remains less work to do. And so, with the 
mind, there is a great difference between increas- 
ing a general power and increasing facility by us- 
ing acquirements already made." 1 Most of the 
authors in physiology and psychology say very 
little about localization of function to particular 
groups of cells, probably because they consider 
it too speculative a hypothesis to be discussed 
either pro or con. The following quotation from 
Herrick regarding the sensory areas compares 
well with the later quotations regarding the motor 
area. "The minute delimitation of the areas for 
each segment of a sensory field is rendered im- 
possible by the overlapping and intercommunica- 
tion between them, but there is no reason to 
doubt the existence of such extensive representa- 
tion on the cortex." 2 

The strongest support for our hypothesis comes 
from Schaefer, in spite of his denial of such a 
detailed localization as we have suggested. He 

1 Wardlaw, Educational Review, January, 1908, "Is Mental Training 
a Myth?" p. 28. 

2 Herrick, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, "Localization." 
See also Thorndike, Elements of Psychology, p. 158. 



84 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

divides the motor area of the monkey into five 
large divisions and then subdivides these into 
many more small divisions, representing various 
movements of the body. Though proving experi- 
mentally the localization of function to very small 
areas, he still denies localization to points on the 
cortex, basing his conclusion upon the experi- 
ments made by several investigators with monkeys 
or anthropoid apes. 

"Within the limits of the several areas above 
enumerated, varieties of movement are obtained 
which indicate a still further differentiation, or in 
other words an intra-areal localization. It is ob- 
vious that these intra-areal localizations are like- 
ly to be most marked within the larger areas, and 
we should further expect the best differentiation in 
connection with those parts which are concerned 
with the more complex and precise movements 
directed by the will. These in the monkey are 
chiefly the movements of the upper limb, and espe- 
cially the hand, and movements concerned with 
facial expression. Further, it is found that for 
many movements, if not for all, there is in each 
case a sort of focal point within the area, from 
which on the average of a large number of experi- 
ments the movement is more readily or more fre- 
quently obtained than elsewhere. It is possible 



LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION 85 

that its focal point does actually represent an abso- 
lutely localized centre of representation of each 
movement, but the fact that the movement is in 
many instances also got with extreme readiness 
in a circumjacent area of greater or less size, and 
that in many individuals it may be produced even 
more readily from other parts of such circumja- 
cent area than the average focal point, seems to 
point to the conclusion, which is that usually ac- 
cepted, that localization of particular movements 
is rather connected with small areas of cortex than 
with mere points on the cerebral surface; in a few 
cases only do these areas seem to be so extremely 
limited in size as to merit being spoken of as 
points. It is further rare to find that the move- 
ment which is provoked is simple and uncompli- 
cated by other movements, although occasionally 
this is so." But the author makes some further 
statements which render this denial less damaging 
to our hypothesis; in fact, his statements might 
be considered as even suggesting it. "Undoubted- 
ly the most striking character of many of the 
movements which are provoked by cerebral exci- 
tation is their co-ordinated and purposeful nature. 
In conformity with this, we find that they are 
rarely produced by contractions of a single muscle 
or group of muscles, but it is frequent for a sue- 



86 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

cession of movements to occur, and these are very 
closely imitative of natural voluntary movements 
of the animal." 1 Barker says "it is significant that 
these observers [Horsley and Schaefer], like all 
observers who have experimented on the cortex, 
find that movements and not individual muscles 
are represented here." 2 

Is not the accepted conclusion, that "movements 
and not individual muscles" are localized on the 
cortex and that these movements ( 'are rarely pro- 
duced by contractions of a single muscle or group 
of muscles," the real reason why these movements 
are localized in small areas rather than in points? 
The different points in a given area, representing 
a given movement, probably consist of very small 
groups of cells controlling the different contrac- 
tions of the different muscles. As the different 
muscles, through instinct or habit, act in concert, 
the first muscle electrically stimulated arouses the 
other muscles through its channels of association 
and produces thereby a unified movement or series 
of movements of all the muscles represented 
within the given area. The focal point is the 
best centre, on the average, for arousing the con- 
certed action of all these muscles, but other points 

1 Schaefer et al., Text-Book of Physiology, Vol. II, pp. 737, 738. 
3 Barker, Nervous System, p. 997. 



LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION 87 

could also be effective starting-points in a greater 
or less degree, according to the individual animal 
experimented upon. It has been very difficult for 
the experimenters to stimulate single muscles and 
make them act alone, because the stimulus is 
transmitted to other muscles than the one directly 
stimulated and thus produces the concerted move- 
ment of them all. This is why the experimenters 
can localize movements, not muscles. But ought 
we to conclude that the single muscles are not 
represented on the cortex? On the other hand, 
there seems little reason why we should not con- 
clude that the points in the given area represent 
the different muscles, the different elements, that 
are combined into the concerted movement rep- 
resented by that area. Sherrington has found 
that not only a given muscle but even the different 
activities of the same muscle have specific repre- 
sentation on the cortex. "Under use of currents 
of moderate intensity we found that not from one 
and the same spot in the cortex can relaxation 
and contraction of a given muscle be evoked at 
different times, but that the two effects are pro- 
vocable at different, sometimes widely separate, 
points of the cortex, and there found regularly." 1 



1 Sherrington, Integrative Action of the Nervous System, p. 283. 
His discussion of the "principle of the common path" (Lecture 



88 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

The hypothesis of localization to points, to very 
small groups of cells, is almost proved for the 
motor area of the monkey and is probably true 
for the entire cortex of that animal. Further- 
more, the experimenters express little doubt that 
localization in the cortex of the monkey corres- 
ponds closely to that in man. 

However, the suggestions made in this essay 
towards establishing a basis for the disciplinary 
value of studies need not rely upon our hypothesis 
of detailed localization. It is difficult to stop at 
any conclusion between this one and the accepted 
one of localization in large areas (visual, auditory, 
motor, association, etc.), of the division of the 
motor area into sub-areas (leg, hand, face., etc.), 
and of the division of these sub-areas into very 
small areas representing movements (opening of 
eyes, closing of eyes, opening of mouth, protrusion 
of tongue, etc.). But we do not care to over- 
emphasize the extreme phases of our hypothesis, 
because the theories of localization now accepted 
are sufficient in themselves to disprove the 
doctrine of formal discipline. 



IV.) offers some difficulty to our hypothesis, in emphasizing the fact 
that censory excitations from different parts of the organism may pro- 
duce the same reflex reaction. However, this common path of response 
should be considered, for our purposes, a common element in the 
various stimuli evoking the response. 



GENERAL CONCEPTS OF METHOD 

If acquired abilities are specific, not general, 
does it follow that there are no general results 
from specific mental discipline? Is it not pos- 
sible to be consistent with our emphasis upon 
the specific character of training and still 
grant that there is a general benefit to be 
gained from this training, not the general 
benefit claimed by the formal disciplinists 
but one of great value in mental development? 
If so, how can such a general benefit be gained? 
Bagley says through "a general ideal of work"; 
Bennett, through "knowledge or ideal consciously 
generalized"; Lewis, through "educating the will 
by inculcating some general principle or motive of 
conduct"; Home, through "ideas and principles 
of action" 1 ; Thorndike, through "identity of pro- 
cedure"; Ruediger, through "identity of aim". As 
this phase of the subject is very important for 
practice, especially in secondary education, it is 
well to quote the best of these discussions before 
trying to work out some conclusion that will em- 

1 Home, Psychological Principles of Education, chap. VI., "The 
Theory of Formal Discipline," p. 78. 

89 



9 o MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

body and modify their suggestions and will con- 
nect them with our previous discussion. 

"The doctrine of formal discipline assumed 
that the mastery of a certain subject gave one an 
increased power to master other subjects. It is 
clear that there is a certain amount of truth in this 
statement, provided that we understand very 
clearly that this increased power must always take 
the form of an ideal that will function as judg- 
ment and not of an unconscious predisposition that 
with function as habit. In other words, unless the 
ideal has been developed consciously, there can be 
no certainty that the power will be increased, no 
matter how intrinsically well the subject may have 
been mastered An ideal is a type of con- 
densed experience. It is the upshot of a multitude 
of reactions and adjustments, both individual and 
racial. Because it is a type of condensed experi- 
ence, it is commonly formulated as a proposition 
or conceptual judgment. Or it may be attached 

to a single word The development of an 

ideal is both an emotional and an intellectual pro- 
cess, but the emotional element is by far the more 
important" (Bagley.) 1 

"Identity of Procedure. The habit acquired in 
a laboratory course of looking to see how chem- 

1 Bagley, Educative Process, pp. 216, 222, 223. 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 91 

icals do behave, instead of guessing at the matter 
or learning statements about it out of a book, may 
make a girl's methods of cooking or a boy's 
methods of manufacturing more scientific because 
the attitude of distrust of opinion and search for 
facts may so possess one as to be carried over 
from the narrower to the wider field. Difficulties 
in studies may prepare students for the difficulties 
of the world as a whole by cultivating the attitudes 
of neglect of discomfort, ideals of accomplishing 
what one sets out to do, and the feeling of dissatis- 
faction with failure." "In the case of the fea- 
tures of attitude and method, taking special pains 
that they are taught means in practice requiring 
their application to varied situations, for we can 
never be sure that a general idea or ideal or atti- 
tude is gained until we test it in application. More- 
over in nine school children out of ten the only 
way that an ideal or attitude does become general 
is by being derived from and again applied to 
many different particular cases. To make ideals 
and attitudes operative in all fields the teacher 
must give them exercise in at least several fields." 
(Thorndike.) 1 
"According to physiological analysis, habits are 

1 Thorndike, Principles of Teaching, pp. 245, 246. There is some 
confusion here between general ideals and widely transferable habits 
in the use of specific methods. 



92 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

specific — they cannot well be anything else — but 
according to common observation certain so-called 
habits appear unquestionably to be generalized. 
Such habits are industry, perseverance, self-re- 
liance, and the like. The cause of the difficulty 
here is no doubt largely a verbal one. If instead 
of the word 'habits' we should use the word 
'ideals' much of the difficulty would disappear. 
Where such a function as perseverance is gener- 
alized, it is done so partly at least through con- 
scious control, which places it in the second cate- 
gory rather than the first." (Ruediger.) 1 

The last quotation is based upon the result of 
experiments carried out in the seventh grade of 
three schools to prove whether "the ideal of neat- 
ness, brought out in connection with, and applied 
in one subject, functions in other school subjects." 
The outline of the methods used in these experi- 
ments is too long to be quoted here. Neatness 
was emphasized in the written work, etc., of one 
subject, until the pupils showed decided improve- 
ment in that subject. The ideal of neatness was 
continually discussed by the teacher in connection 
with that one subject and with life generally, 
though no special allusion was made to the other 

1 Ruediger, Educational Review, November, 1908, "The Indirect Im- 
provement of Mental Function through Ideals," p. 370. 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 93 

school subjects. Then the written work in these 
other subjects, before and after the experiment, 
was compared to see whether the ideal of neat- 
ness had been carried over to them in such a 
way as to produce similar improvement in them. 
The results are summed up in the following 
paragraph: 

"Evidently neatness made conscious as an ideal 
or aim in connection with only one school subject 
does function in other subjects. Directing our 
attention to groups [schools] I and III, the most 
marked improvement of the papers occurred re- 
spectively in geography and in arithmetic, the 
subjects in which neatness was emphasized, but 
there was unquestionable improvement on the 
average also in other subjects. In group I the 
average grades [in neatness] in geography show 
an improvement of 5 points, and those in arith- 
metic and grammar respectively 4 and 3.4 points; 
while in group III arithmetic improved 4.5 points^ 
and geography and history respectively 2.9 and 2 
points. The number of pupils showing improve- 
ment is about the same in all the subjects. In 
group II the improvement was in no case very 
marked, but it is significant that the averages show 
nowhere any decline." (Ruediger.) 1 



Ruediger, Educational Review, November, 1908, p. 369. 



94 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

While agreeing in the main with the points of 
view expressed by these authors, we prefer to state 
the matter thus : A general benefit can be derived 
from specific training in so far as the person 
trained has consciously wrought out, in connection 
with the specific training, a general concept of 
method, based upon the specific methods used in 
that training. The building of such a concept fol- 
lows the same laws as does the building of other 
concepts. The common elements in a number of 
specific methods are abstracted and bound to- 
gether in a general concept of method, a general 
rule or principle of how to do, how to act, in 
situations of a certain general type. These con- 
cepts may be held in the mind in one or more 
sentences, in a single phrase or a single word, in 
a metaphor or a line of poetry or some traditional 
maxim, in a formula of mathematics or chemistry 
or engineering. In all cases the symbol stands 
for a method of activity, be it in the realms of 
pure or applied natural science, of social science 
or practical civics, of business or professional life, 
of personal manner or social relations. The mind 
stores up by means of this symbol the rules and 
directions to guide its activity in adjustment to 
those phases of the environment to which such 
an activity seems applicable. 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 95 

It is necessary at this point to emphasize three 
important distinctions. The first is the distinction 
between what to do and how to do it. The former 
is subject-matter, the latter is method. The 
ideals of the what and the ideals of the how ought 
not to be confused in thought, though they may 
be closely related. Dewey makes clear this dis- 
tinction, using the terms "content and form". 
"Form represents, as it were, the technique, the 
adjustment of means involved in social action, just 
as content refers to the realized value or end of 
social action. What is needed is not a deprecia- 
tion of form, but a correct placing of it, that is, 
seeing that since it is related as means to end, it 
must be kept^ in subordination to an end, and 
taught in relation to the end." 1 

The second important distinction to be em- 
phasized is that between a widely transferable 
acquired ability in the use of some specific method 
and a generalized acquired ability in the use of 
several methods. The former is the result 
of activity in dealing with a concrete situation in 
a specific way and can be transferred to another 
situation only in so far as the method used is 
Common to both. No matter in how many situa- 
tions a given specific ability may thus be used, it 

1 Dewey, Ethical Principles Underlying Education, pp. 18, 19. 



96 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

still remains specific; it never becomes generalized 
and usable in situations which do not have ele- 
ments of method in common with it. As has been 
suggested before in this essay, there is frequent 
confusion at this point, especially because some 
specific methods have elements in common with a 
large number of other methods and therefore the 
abilities developed by the use of the former are 
widely transferable. But this transferability is 
far different from general mental discipline, from 
generalized abilities, powers, habits. 

The third important distinction is that between 
a widely transferable acquired ability and a gen- 
eral concept of method. The one is power and 
efficiency to perform specific activities; the other 
is an intellectual proposition or judgment as to 
how activities of a certain general type should be 
performed. The one is ability to do; the other is 
knowledge of how to do. These are often spoken 
of as one and the same thing, but a little reflection 
will make evident the great difference between 
them. To know how to do, how to apply one- 
self, how to reason, how to control one's desires, 
is part of the victory, but it is only the initial part. 
It guides us in developing an ability, it eliminates 
much of the trial and error otherwise necessary, 
it focuses attention upon the required steps, it 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 97 

short-circuits the process; but it does not bestow 
ability. Ability can be developed through the 
application of the general concept of method to 
a specific situation, but it is only by specific activity 
and neural modification that we can acquire an 
ability. We may know how to be good, reason- 
able, efficient, but we do not actually become good, 
reasonable, efficient until we have practiced, in 
specific situations, these virtues and incarnated 
them in specific deeds. It is the doing that makes 
us what we are. In fact, our knowledge of how 
to do, our concept of method, is really never com- 
plete until we have thus applied and tested it in 
specific deeds. 

Can the formation of such a general concept of 
method from specific methods be explained on the 
afore-mentioned hypothesis of localization of 
function to particular groups of cells in the central 
nervous system? The conscious formulation of 
the concept into words or sentences synchronizes 
with stimulations and consequent modifications of 
particular groups of cells in a word or a concept 
centre of the cortex. Only in some such way 
does it seem possible for the concept to be regis- 
tered in the brain. The modifications in these 
particular groups of cells cannot, of course, be 
generalized, but they can be made generally usable 



98 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

through their associations with different groups of 
cells connected with different specific activities. 
These specific activities include those which, 
through their common elements, formed the orig- 
inal basis of the concept and also those which, 
through their common elements, will be subse- 
quently guided by the concept. A general concept 
of method is, therefore, a centre, a clearing-house, 
connecting the previously used specific methods 
of a certain general type with the subsequently 
used specific methods of that type. This does not 
mean that the cells used and modified in a previous 
activity need be used again in a subsequent activity, 
unless it is necessary to vitalize the central con- 
cept guiding the second activity by reference to 
the concrete basis upon which the concept was 
built. As the general concept of method can be 
used for guidance in several activities, it can be 
considered a common, transferable element in 
them all ; but this common element, this connecting 
link, is one of knowledge of how to do, not of 
ability to do. It can be a central guide even when 
the activities and the abilities derived from these 
activities are different and non-transferable. 

We repeat that it is through general concepts of 
method, not through general discipline, that spe- 
cific methods and training can be made generally 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 99 

beneficial over and above their use in functions in 
which they form an essential part. The more nu- 
merous and varied the specific methods from 
which the common elements have been consciously 
abstracted, the more widely applicable is the gen- 
eral concept of method for the person who formed 
it. Of course, all these specific methods need not 
be worked out or observed at the time when the 
concept is formed. The specific methods used at 
the time may be limited in number and variety, but 
subsequent experience may add other methods and 
thus extend the applicability of the concept. Fur- 
thermore, all of these methods need not at one 
time or another be worked out or observed in the 
concrete; some of them can be imagined from a 
knowledge of other situations to which similar 
methods would apply. The essential thing in 
forming a general concept of method, with vital 
meaning and wide applicability, is to work out, 
or (in a less degree) to observe others work out, 
the specific methods from which the general con- 
cept can be formed. Then, after comprehending 
the value of the method in dealing with the spe- 
cific situation or situations, the pupil should work 
out, or, if that is not possible at the time, he 
should think out, its application to other situa- 
tions. Upon such a wide basis in reality he should 



ioo MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

consciously build and hold his general concept of 
how to deal with these and other possible similar 
situations, applying and enlarging it as later ex- 
perience gives him opportunity for so doing. 
General concepts of method can be formed 
without as systematic or elaborate a process as is 
here suggested. Many are derived by pupils from 
their school work without any realization of the 
steps taken. However, some such process is nec- 
essary, and upon its care and thoroughness depend 
the validity and extension of the general concept. 
Furthermore, ability to use the specific methods 
from which the concept is derived is not a neces- 
sary basis for the formation of the concept; only 
an understanding of the specific methods, only a 
knowledge of how to act in the specific situations, 
is essential. This understanding of methods is 
often gained at school without ability to use them, 
and, on the other hand, ability is often gained in 
the use of methods without an understanding of 
them. But an understanding of specific methods 
is never complete without ability to use them, and 
ability to use them is never complete without an 
understanding of them. Therefore, it is well to 
urge a careful, systematic procedure both in spe- 
cific training and in the formation of general con- 
cepts of method. 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 101 

What are the steps by which a teacher can 
lead his pupils to develop a general concept of 
method. First, he can lead them to recall and 
explain the methods previously used, which are 
similar to those to be worked out. Second, he 
can lead them to work out and understand the 
specific methods used in connection with the sub- 
ject-matter that is presented. Third, he can lead 
them to analyze and compare these specific meth- 
ods in order to abstract their common elements. 
Fourth, he can lead them to bind together these 
common elements into a general concept of 
method. Fifth, he can lead them to apply, con- 
cretely or imaginatively, the concept thus formed 
to other subject-matter. Here we have the "five 
formal steps" used in developing a general con- 
cept of method, just as they should be used in 
developing other general concepts. Of course, 
these steps are only suggestive, not binding as 
some books would have us believe; but they do 
outline the successive stages in the mental process 
of forming concepts. With allowance for all the 
variations necessary under special circumstances, 
it must still be reiterated that these steps are a 
good guide for any teacher who strives to make his 
pupils derive general benefit from their specific 
activities and training. 



102 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

Concepts of methods should be associated with 
sufficient emotional valuation and impulsion to 
make them effective in practice. But all voluntary 
acts need to be directly or indirectly motived by 
the emotions; the necessity is general and needs 
no special emphasis here. The stress put by Bag- 
ley upon u the emotional element as by far the 
more important" in his "ideals" shows that he is 
thinking especially of those concepts of method 
for the application of which great emotional moti- 
vation is needed, as, for example, the general con- 
cept of how to be courteous to those we dislike or 
of how to deny ourselves in social service. But 
there are a large number of concepts of method 
for the application of which little emotional moti- 
vation is needed, as, for example, the general con- 
cept of how to test the logical steps in an argument 
or of how to sift source material. Furthermore, 
emotions generally centre around the object in 
view, the subject-matter, rather than the method; 
it is what we should do, not how we should do it, 
that is usually the centre of our emotional strug- 
gles. But the general concepts to be derived from 
specific training are those of method, over and 
above subject-matter. Of course, the method can 
be made an end of action, not a means, and we 
may like it or dislike it; but it has then been mis- 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 103 

placed and misvalued. Its real value is to guide 
in the doing of what we have decided to do, after 
such motivation and choice as the situation de- 
mands. 

In this connection it is interesting to compare 
a few discussions of the elements of method, or 
form, in mental discipline. In addition, reference 
should be made to some of the discussions and 
experiments previously outlined, which emphasize 
either the transfer of ability acquired in the use 
of certain elements of method or the formation of 
general guiding principles of how to memorize, 
how to pay attention, how to pick out the essentials 
in a test, etc. Some of the authors fail to make 
one or more of the three distinctions which we 
have pointed out as necessary for clearness in dis- 
cussing the elements of method. 

Our first selections are from a valuable paper 
by Hoose, which antedates by four years Hins- 
dale's initiation of the American movement 
against the doctrine of formal discipline. "Form 
in mental activity means that peculiar activity 
which the mind exerts when it does any particular 
thing, or thinks any particular thought or word." 
"Form is given to mental activity by the form of 
the subject-matter that is cognized, seized, known, 
thought, or done; this proposition is true in the 



104 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

most general sense. Each and every form of the 
thing to be done or thought requires its own (pe- 
culiar) form of mental activity to do it or to 
think it." "Exercise and repetition in the activ- 
ities of one faculty lead to mastery in those par- 
ticular forms only." u Mastery of one subject 
stands for itself alone in so far as the subject dif- 
fers from others in form." "When the forms of 
different subjects are similar, the habit acquired 
upon one of the subjects will be conserved In 
greater or less part to aid one in learning the 
other subjects." "The teacher gives form in the 
school-room to all the subjects that are not natural 
— i.e., to nearly all that the child studies. As 
the forms of the subject condition the forms of 
mental activity, the teacher (author) has great 
power and responsibility in the school-room." 1 

"For the empirical science of logic the term 
form, as applied to our intellectual processes, in- 
dicates a common element, or series of common 
elements, in those processes, which makes the 
theory of formal discipline at least intelligible 
and apparently tenable as a doctrine of intellec- 
tual training. In other words, formal training is 
discipline in certain discoverable forms of intel- 



1 Hoose, Report of the National Educational Association, 1890, "Men- 
tal Effects of Form in Subject-Matter, " pp. 754, 755. 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 105 

lectual activity." "Formal discipline is the prac- 
tice of the mind in certain forms or methods of 
thinking which are 'common elements' in wide 
ranges of experience. " "The one word which 
sums up the theory of formal discipline is method, 
or, rather, methods. It is the theory that the 
mind can be trained to do well certain kinds of 
work, to follow successfully certain methods of 
procedure. " "For the carrying on of any pur- 
suit, we need not only talent, native or acquired, 
but also information, interest, practice, before the 
work can be successfully done. Exercise in one 
function should not be expected, therefore, to give 
equal facility in the carrying on of another. 
Obviously it does not, and the degree of the diffi- 
culty of transfer is determined, not only by 
identity or difference in the formal elements, but 
also by differences and similarities in the contents 
as well. That such a position is in accordance 
with the results of investigation thus far will not, 
I think, be denied." (Meiklejohn.) 1 

"What are these formal elements? I am 
tempted to call them laws — the laws of nature, 
the laws of composition and succession of mental 
states, the laws of human intercourse and of 



1 Meiklejohn, Educational Review, February, 1909, "Is Mental Train- 
ing a Myth?" pp. 132, 134, 136, 138. 



106 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

human advantage." In any discussion of formal 
discipline, the forms of human activity, not the 
forms of the outside environment, are to be dis- 
tinguished from content — the material with which 
or upon which the individual acts. Both the con- 
tent and the forms of the environment furnish the 
subject-matter elements in mental discipline; the 
forms of dealing with this environment furnish 
the method elements in mental discipline. We 
must distinguish between forms of the environ- 
ment, as we interpret them, and forms of human 
activity in relation to that environment. Later on, 
Delabarre makes ithis distinction and discusses 
those formal elements which we have preferred 
to call methods of activity. "There is still an- 
other class of what, I think, can with equal jus- 
tice be called formal elements, to which I desire 
to direct your attention. These are the generni 
forms, not of our apprehension of the world, but 
of our conduct toward its situations. We know 
them commonly as the fundamentally desirable 
moral qualities, the components of good char- 
acter. We can easily see that included among 
them are sympathy, kindliness, fearlessness, truth- 
fulness, justice, courage. These seem almost like 
the names of emotions. But they are more than 
that. They are desirable elementary forms of 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 107 

our attitude toward the world, our reactions upon 
it. Any one of them is a form, whose possession 
gives us good judgment in dealing with a wide 
variety of situations, and perhaps slow but finally 
firm acquirement of any one of them is of enorm- 
ously more importance to us than the learning of 
any number of specific facts." Here we have an 
emphasis, which we also noticed in Bagley's dis- 
cussion, only upon those methods of activity which 
require great emotional motivation for their ap- 
plication. "The formula of common elements is 
true, but of no practical value. Practically all 
mental processes have elements, formal or struc- 
tural, in common. Not only does good training 
in any subject improve methods of learning, of 
attention, of work, of comprehension; but it is 
also true that all knowledge possesses some ele- 
ments in common, and the number of these may 
be very considerable even in case of subjects that 
appear at first sight little related. The structural, 
technical, content-elements are very important, 
but they can be left more safely to individual need 
and individual endeavor. The formal elements 
are universal, or at least of wide application, and 
hence are more helpful and more difficult to ac- 
quire. To them education should surely give its 
best attention. No one can be a mere specialist. 



108 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

Everyone needs formal material for correctly 
judging a wide variety of experiences and rela- 
tions that are essential to life." (Delabarre.) 1 
And, finally, a quotation is given which illus- 
trates well a popular confusion on the subject, a 
confusion even implied in the quotations from 
Meiklejohn and Delabarre. Raymont makes a 
distinction for mental discipline between the mat- 
ter and the method of instruction, but he gives 
general disciplinary value, general mental training, 
to the method, although denying it to the matter 
with which the method was used. He is really up- 
holding the doctrine of formal discipline in regard 
to elements of method. "Mental discipline de- 
pends, not so much upon the subjects taught, as 
upon the method of teaching. Bad science-teach- 
ing will not improve the reasoning powers, but 
will leave the learner still under the thumb of au- 
thority and prescription; whilst good science- 
teaching will avoid this evil, and will also 
exercise the imagination, by opening out won- 
derlands as glorious as those of literature. 
On the other hand, bad literary and historical in- 
struction will leave the imagination barren, whilst 
sound instruction in these branches will not only 



1 Delabarre, Education, May, 1909, "Formal Discipline and the Doc- 
trine of Common Elements," pp. 591, 593, 599. 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 109 

avoid this mistake, but will also furnish the means 
of abundant exercise in cautious judgment and 
valid inference." "Though the method of in- 
struction should be carefully devised with a view 
to mental discipline, it is misleading to say that 
the choice of the matter of instruction depends 
upon considerations of discipline." 1 



Raymont, Principles of Education, p. ioo. 



A STANDARD OF EDUCATIONAL 
VALUES 

The doctrine of formal discipline implies that 
the mind is made up or possessed of certain gen- 
eral powers or faculties — memory, imagination, 
reasoning, etc. These powers are developed by 
exercise to a degree proportionate to the force 
and duration of the exercise taken, but the stimu- 
lus which calls forth this exercise of any power 
affects but little the kind of exercise and conse- 
quently the kind of development of that power 
resulting from such exercise. This development 
in strength, breadth, accuracy, etc. of the power 
involved can be used in response to any other 
stimulus than the one by which the power was 
previously exercised, with little change in nature 
or diminution in amount. The different powers 
are considered like different tanks or reservoirs 
with many pipes emptying into them and many 
draining out of them. No matter through what 
pipe water gets into the tank, it can go out by any 
other pipe and continue almost unchanged through 
the entire process. The practical problem of men- 
tal discipline in education then resolves itself into 

no 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES in 

( i ) deciding what are the power tanks (memory, 
reasoning, etc.) to be filled by school education; 
(2) selecting the largest usable pipes to carry 
water into each tank; and (3) forcing water 
through these pipes into the tank until the supply 
is considered sufficient to meet any and all de- 
mands. When any given subject, say mathema- 
tics, is defended on this doctrine, the implication 
is that it is the largest usable pipe for carrying 
water into the tank of reasoning or accuracy or 
some other power, and therefore more of the 
desired power can be accumulated through this 
pipe than through any other. Or a given sub- 
ject may be defended because it consists of a 
number of pipes carrying water to several power 
tanks, reasoning, accuracy, attention, etc. 

The doctrine of specific disciplines, on the other 
hand, claims that there are no such general pow- 
ers or faculties — memory, imagination, reasoning, 
etc., but that these names stand for vague classi- 
fications of mental responses to stimuli. The 
mind develops in a specific manner by practice 
in response to specific stimuli, and the bene- 
fit of this development can be fully used only 
in future similar responses to stimuli similar 
in whole or in part to those which called 
forth the previous responses. This benefit de- 



ii2 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

creases just in proportion to the amount of dis- 
similarity between the future and the previous 
stimuli. To refer to the afore-mentioned analogy 
(which, of course, is in no way exact), the oppo- 
sition holds that there can be no tanks or reser- 
voirs of general power, with many pipes emptying 
into them and many draining out of them. Each 
pipe collects, holds, and discharges the water flow- 
ing into it. The practical problem is to choose 
pipes of the most specific value and then force 
water into them. Mathematics, for instance, 
would be defended on this doctrine because of its 
great specific value in developing ability to reason, 
to be accurate, etc. in regard to the mathematical 
elements in the environment. 

As the following standard of educational values 
is based upon the doctrine of specific disciplines, 
its main emphasis is upon the specific or intrinsic 
value of each element of subject-matter or of 
method in the school curriculum. This value is 
determined by the environmental importance of 
the element and consequently by the environmental 
usefulness of the specific ability developed by the 
element. As a specific element of subject-matter 
or of method may appear in various combinations 
in the environment, the specific ability developed 
by it can be used with as many of these combina- 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 113 

tions as are recognized as containing the given 
element. The value of these elements is there- 
fore determined objectively and sociologically, 
but when brought into the school they should be 
so arranged and interpreted as to appeal to the 
pupil at successive stages of growth, and also to 
reveal to him their significance in the various com- 
binations in which they appear in the environ- 
ment. 

Out of the specific elements of method can be 
formed general concepts of method, but these 
concepts should be derived from methods of the 
most specific value in the environment. Thus can 
be realized two educational aims — training in the 
use of valuable specific methods, and the formation 
and application of valuable general concepts of 
method. To seek these aims separately, giving 
one study for its specific value and one for its 
general method value, is clearly a waste of the 
most previous asset of the school, namely, the 
child's energy. It may be that in one study one 
value will be emphasized and in another study the 
other value will be emphasized, but with few ex- 
ceptions the studies of the most specific value will 
be those of the most general method value. 
Therefore, it is certainly the wisest policy to base 
a criterion of studies upon the specific value of 



ii 4 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

their elements of subject-matter and of method. 
The elements of studies that are common to 
the present or future environments of most of the 
pupils are the elements to be studied and tested 
in working out a school curriculum; the other 
elements are to be eliminated, no matter what 
traditional emphasis may have been given 
them. As even the important elements in the 
environment are far too many to be included in 
elementary and secondary curricula, also among 
them must there be a rigid and relentless selec- 
tion. Every included element must have proved 
its supremacy over the competing elements that 
might have taken its place if such a test were not 
carefully enforced. "The question which we 
contend is of such transcendent moment, is, not 
whether such or such knowledge is of worth, but 
what is its relative worth?" (Spencer.) 1 In how 
many and in how important ways (quantity and 
quality of usefulness) can the specific element be 
used by the pupil in adjustment to his environ- 
ment? Here is our basis of comparison between 
elements, and there is no reason why each and 
every element of each and every study should 
not be subjected to such a comparison. To select 
the most valuable elements and organize them 

1 Spencer, Education, 1861 Editon, p. 28. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 115 

into a graded curriculum ought to be the chief 
purpose of school administration. "As the edu- 
cational aim is the unfolded and capable mind in 
the concrete social and natural situations of life, 
and as we are efficient in those situations in pro- 
portion as we have developed ourselves earlier in 
similar situations, it follows that those subjects 
have the greatest educational value which have 
the greatest number of identical elements with 
the situations of life A new problem is pro- 
posed to educational theorists at this point, viz., 
to go through our subjects of study with a view 
to determining what and how many elements they 
have in common with life." (Home.) 1 

Of course, our standard is a utilitarian one. It 
would be wasteful and wrong to have any other. 
But this standard is by no means that of a nar- 
row, materialistic utilitarianism; it simply stands 
for the test of usefulness to the whole person in 
relation to the whole environment, emphasizing 
especially those ethical, intellectual, and aesthetic 
ideals that minister to the best uses of the human 
spirit. A general development can be promoted 
by useful responses to important phases of the 



1 Home, Education, May, 1909, "The Practical Influence of the New 
Views of Formal Discipline," p. 616. Has a short bibliography. See also 
Bolton, School Review, February, 1904, "Facts and Fictions Concern- 
ing Educational Values"; Tompkins, Philosophy of Teaching, p. 266. 



n6 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

environment far better than by the hypothetical 
all-roundness of an arbitrarily chosen group of 
cultural or of formal disciplinary studies. It is 
a sad commentary upon our educational abstract- 
ness that we often fail to realize the high and 
noble inclusiveness of the ideal of use in our 
preparation of boys and girls for efficiency and 
service in society. We sometimes run away from 
the real test of real things and cry out for culture, 
as if culture had any meaning apart from its use 
in adjustment. 

It is especially important in teaching to lead 
pupils to recognize the various environmental re- 
lations and uses of the elements of subject-matter 
or of method which are brought into the school. 
If pupils are not thus guided they may fail to see 
these relations and uses and consequently may 
fail to apply the knowledge and abilities devel- 
oped in school to those phases of the outside en- 
vironment to which they should be applied. Of 
course, no relation is to be brought into the school 
which is not in the environment; to trump up arti- 
ficial relations between elements for school pur- 
poses — to stimulate interest, etc., — is misleading 
and almost dishonest. But as a given element of 
subject-matter or of method may be environment- 
ally related in a number of different ways to a 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 117 

number of different elements, the limited time and 
energy of the pupil necessitate a comparative test 
and a rigid selection of these relations, so as to 
bring into the school only those that have the 
greatest quantity and quality of environmental 
usefulness. The test will therefore be similar to 
that of the elements themselves; in fact, it is but 
part of the latter, because the values of the ele- 
ments cannot be comparatively determined with- 
out a comparative test of the values of their rela- 
tions. This is why many teachers do not know the 
subject-matter or method they teach; in knowing 
the elements apart from the environment which 
gives them value they really do not know what 
their value is. This is probably the weakest point 
in our teaching force, — the ignorance of teachers 
regarding the environmental relations and values 
of school studies. Their training should be more 
in practical sociology and less in hypothetical 
pedagogy, and a far greater emphasis upon the 
social relations of the curriculum is needed both 
in normal school and in university courses for 
teachers. 

However suggestive may be the various 
schemes of concentration or correlation, they can 
never be widely accepted, because the centres of 
their circles are not the centres of the environ- 



u8 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

ment. The elements are not thus centripetalized 
in actuality. Therefore, in school they should be 
interpreted only in those inter-relations that rep- 
resent, explain, and emphasize their comparative 
environmental nature and significance, the same 
elements, if necessary, being brought into the 
course again and again to reveal new relations 
and to help in apperceiving new elements. 

It is not denied that elements and relations not 
directly useful in themselves must be included as 
a preparation for elements directly useful, but this 
indirect usefulness may be of more comparative 
value than the direct usefulness of some compet- 
ing elements. It is also not denied that logical 
consistency and completeness sometimes require 
the introduction of elements and relations not 
directly useful in themselves, in order to bind to- 
gether those elements of a subject that have been 
selected as of the most comparative value. The 
elements thus introduced would then have to stand 
the test of their usefulness in binding together 
directly useful elements. Furthermore, the logical 
consistency and completeness of a text or course 
must in themselves be tested. They should not 
exceed the logical consistency and completeness 
necessary for the proper use of the elements of 
that text or course in their environmental rela- 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 119 

tions, or for the proper illustration of specific 
methods which are to be worked up into valuable 
general concepts of method. 

Thoroughness is another untested school ideal. 
Thoroughness has no meaning in the abstract; 
it must be judged by some standard, for some 
purpose. Elements of school work must be 
taught as thoroughly as is necessary for their 
proper use in the environment and for the proper 
illustration of specific methods. In other words, 
thoroughness must be valued according to its 
functional significance. 

Let it not be supposed that the standard as out- 
lined interferes in any way with the adjustment of 
the curriculum to successive stages of the pupil's 
development. There is no essential opposition be- 
tween the selected elements and relations of the 
environment, which are brought into the school, 
and the developing capacities and interests of the 
pupil. The present opposition is one of the arti- 
ficialities of school work. Dewey argues power- 
fully that "the child and the curriculum" can be 
vitally related, that the experience of society rep- 
resented by the curriculum can be arranged, in- 
terpreted, ''psychologized" for the child in such 
a way as to be assimilated by him and become 
his own experience. "The value of the formulated 



120 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

wealth of knowledge that makes up the course of 
study is that it may enable the educator to de- 
termine the environment of the child, and thus by 
indirection to direct." (Dewey.) 1 The outside 
environment must be made into the meaningful 
school environment of the pupil, and there is no 
need why, in this process, the elements of the 
outside environment should be misrelated or mis- 
valued. On the other hand, it is only in so far 
as these two environments are similar that the 
child lives in school a life that has functional value 
outside. And this is the way to develop a true, 
educative interest, rather than an artificial interest, 
in school work, by arousing in the child a desire 
to express himself in response to those phases of 
his school environment which he recognizes as 
also important in his outside environment. With 
this limited outside environment as a starting- 
point and a constant source of reference, the 
school should continue to enlarge the child's ex- 
perience through the knowledge and activities of 
a larger environment, the epitome of that outside 
environment for which he is being prepared. 
Thus will his school environment and his outside 



1 Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum, p. 39. See also Snedden, 
Educational Review, March, 1908, "The New Basis of Method"; Meriam, 
Educational Review, April, 1909, "Fundamentals in the Elementary 
School Curriculum." 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 121 

environment together grow into that of the intelli- 
gent adult citizen, and thus will his specific abil- 
ities to meet the opportunities and responsibilities 
of his adult life be developed by meeting the op- 
portunities and responsibilities of his constantly 
enlarging school life. 

It may be objected that both the present and 
the future outside environment of each individual 
pupil are so different from those of any other pupil 
that it is impossible to select, by any comparative 
test of environmental usefulness, elements with 
which to organize a uniform course of study for 
the masses of children in the public schools. Such 
an objection really denies the possibility of mak- 
ing any suitable uniform course of study at all. 
If we cannot make one by selection according to 
environmental values, we certainly cannot make a 
better one by selection according to any other kind 
of values. The public school system is based upon 
the belief that at least the great majority of pupils 
have now and will have in the future a community 
of need, interest, and responsibility. This com- 
munity is represented by the minimum require- 
ments in the course of study, representing the es- 
sential elements in the common present or future 
environment of most pupils. Opposition to this 
common ground of school work is due to a failure 



122 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

to realize that the like-mindedness of the citizens, 
as Giddings suggests, is a fundamental necessity 
in a democratic society, and that our public 
schools, through their common courses and in- 
terests, ought to lead in developing this like- 
mindedness. Above a minimum course there 
should be room for individual variations in 
advanced and parallel work and, even within this 
minimum, allowances should be made for indi- 
viduality of response to the subject-matter and 
methods given. But if there is to be no common 
course for our public schools, in city, county, or 
State, our education will carry individualism to an 
extreme and will lose its great mission of being 
one of the principal cohesive forces in society. 

This standard of educational values also applies 
to school management. The motives, routine, 
discipline, etc., of school life can be analyzed into 
elements of subject-matter and of method and can 
be tested for their environmental values. It is 
wasting a great opportunity to compel pupils into 
an artificial regime, when the very organization 
and processes of the school community ought to 
prefigure and prepare for the community outside. 
If this ideal is introduced into school manage- 
ment, it will become a great force for social effi- 
ciency and for ethical training by developing 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 123 

through social relations those specialized habits 
and general concepts that will make for good in 
the individual and in the environment. What is 
needed is not necessarily a "school city" or a 
formal copy of some social organization, for 
these may or may not interpret the spirit of 
society and therefore may or may not be edu- 
cative. The community life of the school must 
emphasize the standards, responsibilities, and 
methods of the community life outside, in 
so far as the school can use these for 
educational purposes. The doctrine of formal 
discipline cannot apply here any more than else- 
where. Specific subject-matter and method, spe- 
cific training and abilities, general concepts of 
method — these are the materials, methods, and 
results of the ethical training that should come 
through school motives and discipline. If these 
materials and methods are those common to both 
the school and the outside environment, the results 
will be of untold value; but if the materials and 
methods of the school are artificial, the results 
will be of limited value. Through society are we 
educated for society. 1 

Before the standard developed in this essay is 

1 See especially Dewey, School and Society; Scott, Social Education; 
and Gilbert, The School and Its Life. 



124 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

applied, for the purpose of illustration, to some 
phases of elementary and secondary school cur- 
ricula, it will be profitable to compare a few 
standards of educational values, set by writers op- 
posed to the doctrine of formal discipline. Three 
are by educationists and two by sociologists. 

"The ability to deal with any situation depends 
upon one's having had experience with some simi- 
lar situation. And the educationist will so plan it 
in view of this principle that the individual will 
in his educational course be made ready for those 
general and special duties which he will perform 
as a member of a community He will ex- 
clude everything which does not give very good 
proofs of its suitability to assist the learner in his 
relations with men and things, by presenting to 
him now situations which he will encounter, 
though it may be in a more complex form, in later 
life. In the matter of studies purporting to be of 
social value, for example, the educationist will 
proceed upon the doctrine that if the individual 
can be got to react in desirable ways to social sit- 
uations actual or ideal during the developmental 
period, then he will acquire modes of reaction 
which will be serviceable to him in all times and 
places. The educationist will cast out everything 
which cannot return an affirmative answer to the 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 125 

question, Will the individual in mastering you be 
making in the best way adaptations which he will 
be required to make as a member of a social 
organism?" (O'Shea.) 1 

"The educational values of different subjects, 
i.e., their efficiency in promoting the realization 
of the aim of education as defined above [to pre- 
pare for complete living], consist (a) in the scope, 
kind, strength, and permanence of the incentives 
to activity; and (b) in the kind, degree, and 
permanence of the power to think and execute that 

those subjects may develop The kinds of 

incentives to activity, whether intellectual, aesthe- 
tic, moral, or constructive, derivable from the 
course of study, depend on content (the nature of 
the subject-matter). Since incentives are im- 
pulses to activity growing out of interest in the 
subject-matter, they will develop strength and per- 
manence when interest in the subject-matter is 

strong, real, and permanent Power means 

ability to do something — to bring about results. 
The results achieved will always be in some one 
field of activity, however; and the kind of power 
developed through the pursuit of a given subject 
will consequently be usually restricted to power 
in dealing with data of a particular sort 

1 O'Shea, Education as Adjustment, pp. 288-291. 



126 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 
There is no such thing as power in general that 
can be cultivated through the pursuit of any one 
subject, and can then be drawn upon at any time 
for successful achievement in other subjects. 
The power developed will always be chief- 
ly specific : but if, through correlation, the mutual 
ramification and interdependence of subjects are 
traced; and further, if the method of one subject 
is explicitly carried over to other subjects to 
which it can be legitimately applied, the power 
developed will also be to some extent general." 
(Hanus.) 1 

"With the abandonment of the dogma of 
faculty discipline, which assured us that all the 
powers of the mind could be acquired by formal 
exercises in dead languages, school mathematics, 
etc., there clearly remains but one alternative — to 
train the pupils for the specific goal it is desirable 
to reach. This alternative permits no compro- 
mise. The exercises which prepare for life are 
the duties, knowledge, and emotional attitudes of 
existing life itself, which the world's workers are 
currently using. The alternative recognizes that 
like produces only like, and, therefore, repudiates 
those exercises such as Latin or algebra, which in 
themselves are acknowledged to be unused, except 

1 Hanus, Educational Aims and Educational Values, pp. 7-10. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 127 

as mental trapezes of the schoolroom. It requires 
that the pupil's energy shall be centred upon the 
mastery of those things which existing world life 
requires of its active and productive journeymen; 
anything less is insufficient, and anything of a 
different character is irrelevant. How shall we 
obtain such a course of study, and who shall sys- 
tematize it? Manifestly, the first step in the task 
is to catalogue the essential duties, items of knowl- 
edge, and emotional attitudes current in the 
world's usage. This material must then be set up 
and arranged in the schools as goals of instruc- 
tion, and the business of the pedagogue will be to 
enable the pupil to acquire these world-used ma- 
terials to an effective degree as readily as pos- 
sible." 1 

"The prime problem of education, as the so- 
ciologist views it, is how to promote adaptation 
of the individual to the social conditions, natural 
and artificial, within which individuals live, and 

move, and have their being Sociology has 

no tolerance for the pedantry that persists in 
carpentering together educational courses out of 
subjects which are supposed to exercise, first, the 



1 Burk, The World's Work, July, 1909, "The Bankruptcy of 'Educa- 
tion,' II., pp. 1 1 764, 1 1 765. See Burk's interesting but exaggerated at- 
tack on the doctrine of formal discipline in the June number of the 
same magazine. 



128 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

perceptive faculty, then the memory, then the lan- 
guage faculty, then the logical faculty, etc. On 
the contrary, every represented contact of a per- 
son with a portion of reality sooner or later calls 
into exercise every mental power of that person, 
probably in a more rational order and proportion 
than can be produced by an artificial process. Our 
business as teachers is primarily, therefore, not 
to train particular mental powers, but to select 
points of contact between learning minds and the 
reality that is to be learned. The mind's own 
autonomy will look out for the appropriate series 
of subjective mental process. In the second place, 
our business as teachers is to bring these percep- 
tive contacts of pupils' minds with points of ob- 
jective reality into true association with all the 
remainder of objective reality, i.e., we should 
help pupils first to see things, and, second, to see 
things together as they actually exist in reality. 
In other words, the demand of sociology upon 
pedagogy is that it shall stop wet-nursing orphan 
mental faculties and find out how to bring per- 
sons into touch with that objectively is, as it is. 
The mind itself will do the rest." (Small.) 1 
"The only thing that can 'develop' or 



1 Small, American Journal of Sociology, May, 1897, "Some Demands 
of Sociology Upon Pedagogy," pp. 842, 843. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 129 

'strengthen' the faculties or the mind is knowl- 
edge, and all real knowledge is science. The ef- 
fect of this on the mind is to furnish it with some- 
thing. It constitutes its contents, and, as we have 
seen, the power, value, and real character of mind 
depend upon its contents. Without knowledge 
the mind, however capable, is impotent and worth- 
less. But there is a great mass of knowledge in 
the world. It does no good unless it is possessed 
by the mind. It is a power as soon as it is pos- 
sessed by the mind. It is as useful to one mind as 
to another. It is the only working power in so- 
ciety, and the working power of society increases 
in proportion to the number possessing it, — prob- 
ably in a greater proportion. Only a few minds 
possess any considerable part of it. All are ca- 
pable of possessing it all. The paramount duty 
of society, therefore, is to put that knowledge 
into the minds of all its members." (Ward.) 1 



1 Ward, Applied Sociology, p. 312. The pansophic scheme of educa- 
tion, discussed in several of Ward's books, is very valuable but is 
strangely lacking in consideration of the child's capacities and interests. 
There is also a failure to distinguish clearly between knowledge and 
ability. 



THE ELEMENTARY CURRICULUM 

What are the elements of subject-matter and 
of method which are repeated over and over 
again in such important ways in the environment 
as to necessitate their being included in the school 
preparation of the great majority of people in 
that environment? Germany and France have 
answered this question with far more national 
unanimity and success than we can hope to attain 
in this country, because our local control and di- 
versity of conditions render such uniformity unde- 
sirable and impossible. Is it not possible, how- 
ever, for our States, individually if not collective- 
ly, to select a minimum of elements in language, 
arithmetic, geography, etc., which will be com- 
mon and valuable to the present or future environ- 
ments of the great majority of their elementary 
school pupils? These elements will be selected on 
account of the superior number and importance 
(quantity and quality) of their uses in the en- 
vironment, in comparison with other elements 
competing for their places in the curriculum. 

A glance at many text-books used in our schools 
reveals a collection of elements of all degrees of 

130 



ELEMENTARY CURRICULUM 131 

value, from zero up to the highest. Especially is 
this true in arithmetic, geography, and history. 
And, far more significant, these elements are often 
not graded or emphasized so as to show their 
value as compared with each other; on the dead 
level of fact versus fact both teacher and pupil be- 
come bewildered in interpreting the usefulness of 
the elements presented. The amount of space and 
time devoted to this or that element is often dis- 
proportionate, above or below, their real value 
as judged by a true environmental standard. The 
emphasis put upon a given element in school 
should reflect the emphasis put upon it in the en- 
vironment. The difficulty in mastering an ele- 
ment of subject-matter or of method might cause 
it to take up more time and attention in school 
than its comparative value would justify; but this 
would be unusual, if the element were properly 
placed in the curriculum and the proper prepara- 
tion were made for it. However, if the time and 
attention required to master the element would 
still be far in excess of its real value, then 
there would be doubt as to its right to a place in 
the curriculum at all. 

McMurry has well criticized the lack of proper 
emphasis in courses of study and has outlined a 
topical scheme based upon the comparative use- 



132 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

fulness of the elements. He also shows how such 
a scheme would eliminate many elements of com- 
parative uselessness, now emphasized on account 
of their supposed disciplinary value. "The idea 
that the discipline gained will make up for all 
losses is one of those long-lived myths which is 
at last rapidly disappearing before a more ra- 
tional view of education. A large proportion of 
the time of children is now wasted by excellent 
teachers in gaining a formal excellence in studies 
which is beyond the present needs of the children, 
and has no defence except on the basis of the 
exploded doctrine of formal discipline." 1 

The present necessity is for an elimination of 
the less important elements and a graded scale 
of emphasis upon the more important. The over- 
crowded curriculum would then be reduced in 
amount, confusion, and strain. Room would be 
made for those new elements that by their com- 
parative value deserve places in the curriculum; 
nature-study and manual training would be repre- 
sented proportionately to their environmental 
usefulness; domestic, industrial, and commercial 
elements would be free to assert their value and 
rights in elementary education. Progressive 
changes in the environment would cause progres- 

1 McMurry, Course of Study in the Eight Grades, vol. I., pp. 47, 48. 



ELEMENTARY CURRICULUM 133 

sive changes in the curriculum, by the elimination 
of old elements, the introduction of new elements, 
or a redistribution of emphasis upon the elements. 
And, over and above the minimum requirements 
for any State system, or even for any local system, 
there would still be room for elements of special 
usefulness to individual pupils or groups of pupils 
according to their abilities, tastes, or future occu- 
pations. 

There is no overwhelming difficulty in working 
out an agreement as to the elements of arithmetic, 
geography, history, etc., which will identify the 
school environment with the outside environment. 
What are the most important present uses of deci- 
mal fractions? These certainly can be deter- 
mined. Then put these and only these uses in the 
curriculum. What are the elements of knowledge 
about the German Empire most often required 
of our citizens generally by our present relations 
to that country? These certainly can be deter- 
mined. Then put these elements and only these 
in the curriculum. What are the facts about the 
Louisiana Purchase necessary for the mass of our 
citizens to know? These certainly can be deter- 
mined. Then put these facts and only these in 
the curriculum. And so on through the element- 
ary school studies. 



i 3 4 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

We claim that these elements can be selected 
after careful appraisal by experts and that only 
in such a way can a curriculum be formed that 
will have the most functional power for the larg- 
est number of pupils. To claim that it is im- 
possible for any group of people to realize an 
environmental standard of comparative values in 
making out a curriculum is to deny the possibility 
of intelligent guidance in education. We do not 
claim that the elements of most comparative value 
can be selected by this or that text-book author 
or publisher, however good he may be, for such 
a selection requires a broader, deeper knowledge 
of environmental values than one man can pos- 
sess. Through expert committees, appointed by 
States or by professional associations, the best 
and most comprehensive knowledge available 
should be brought to bear upon the selection of 
elements for courses of study in the public schools. 
Rather than have these courses blindly conform 
to this or that text-book, which may or may not 
have any creditable or consistent selection and 
valuation of elements, the courses should repre- 
sent and realize the best standard that the spe- 
cialists can make. Then, to this standard text- 
books should be made to conform. The choice 
of the mental food and exercise of hundreds of 



ELEMENTARY CURRICULUM 135 

thousands of children is far too important a prob- 
lem to be left to a text-book author, to a pub- 
lisher, to an official, or to a lay board of trustees. 
The lackadaisical way in which the selection of 
the curriculum is left to anybody or everybody 
is cause for a serious indictment of the educational 
profession. No wonder we are skeptical about 
ever knowing the value of this or that element, 
when we take so little care about the selection of 
it and rely upon a crude empiricism to test it. 

The contest between content and form in the 
elementary school is often confused with the con- 
test between the adherents and the opponents to 
the doctrine of formal discipline. "Until recently, 
the form studies, such as grammar, arithmetic 
and spelling, constituted the core and, in quantity, 
the bulk of the elementary curriculum. The train- 
ing, or discipline, given by these subjects was held 
to be the element of chief importance in the early 
years of schooling." 1 These subjects, however, 
were emphasized more on account of their special 
disciplinary value than on account of their general 
disciplinary value. The pupil was trained in the 
ability to analyze sentences, the ability to manipu- 
late numbers, and the ability to construct words 
out of letters. The general discipline supposed to 

1 Monroe, Text-Book in the History of Education, p. 529. 



136 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

result from this training was considered of less 

importance than these great special aims. 

An emphasis upon the form studies is not in- 
consistent with the doctrine of specific disciplines. 
The problem now is to control this emphasis ac- 
cording to the need of these specific forms in the 
outside environment, to give only such attention 
to them as will be required for their mastery and 
for their use in that environment. That a form is 
often over-emphasized, we agree, especially as it 
is sometimes taught apart from the content and 
relations with which it is environmentally used. 
But, as Dewey says, form is of as much value as 
content and should receive its due emphasis u in 
subordination to an end." 

The building of general concepts of method 
from particular methods is not the work of the 
elementary school to a great degree. The pupil 
is not ready for such conceptualizing. The con- 
scious abstracting of the common elements from 
particular methods and the generalizing of these 
into a general concept of method require a men- 
tal development that rarely comes before adoles- 
cence. Therefore, the mastery of particular 
methods, of special forms, is the methodological 
aim of the elementary school; and this means, of 
course, particular methods of the most compara- 



ELEMENTARY CURRICULUM 137 

tive value in relation to particular subject-matter 
of the most comparative value. In many sub- 
jects and especially in the realm of "morals 
and manners" there are opportunities for the 
teacher to suggest other particular applications of 
a method than those actually applied in particular 
situations in school or home or playground. 
These suggested applications extend the conscious- 
ness of the method's applicability, and tend to 
make widely transferable the specific ability devel- 
oped through use of the method, even though 
general concepts are not formed. In the last two 
years of the elementary school some specific 
methods can be worked up into general concepts, 
but care must be taken not to force this process 
prematurely. The high-school furnishes the great 
opportunity in public education for forming gen- 
eral concepts of method, and it is to this aspect 
of the secondary curriculum that we will devote 
most attention. 



THE SECONDARY CURRICULUM 

The most generally valuable elements of the 
environment having been introduced into the ele- 
mentary curriculum, there is not as much need for 
a large body of prescribed elements in the second- 
ary curriculum. The basic representativeness of 
the elementary course, more than the age and na- 
ture of the adolescent pupils, allows election in the 
high-school. It must never be forgotten, how- 
ever, that a general, all-round development of 
high-school pupils necessitates their mastering 
such similar elements of subject-matter and of 
method as will prepare them to meet the general 
and fundamental needs of the environment they 
will have in common with each other. Specializa- 
tion in the high-school should be based upon a 
minimum of definitely and uniformly prescribed 
studies, such as English, geometry, United States 
history, and either biology or physics. 

Over and above this limited prescription, 
studies with similar elements of subject-matter or 
of method can be grouped together and elected 
by pupils according to their individual capacities 
and careers. The group system can be defended 
on the principle that similar elements in group 

138 



SECONDARY CURRICULUM 139 

studies, rather than exactly the same elements in 
prescribed studies, are sufficient to promote a simi- 
lar general development in all pupils, while allow- 
ing some freedom of choice. The system can fur- 
ther be defended on the principle that, even 
though)! the subject-matter in a group may be 
different, the similarity of the methods used with 
this different subject-matter is sufficient and far 
more important in promoting a similar general 
development in all pupils. This is especially true 
if the common elements in the specific methods 
used by the pupils are consciously abstracted and 
generalized by them into a general concept of 
method, applicable to the entire group. If studies 
have little similarity, either in subject-matter or 
in method, they should not be grouped together 
and pupils should not be allowed to substitute one 
for the other,except as a free elective. 

And finally, over and above definite prescrip- 
tions and group electives, there ought to be some 
room in the secondary curriculum for free elec- 
tives, to allow individuality free play without any 
consideration of uniformity or similarity as com- 
pared with the other pupils. 

As to what proportion of the entire course 
should be given to each of the three divisions — 
definite prescriptions, group electives, and free 



140 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

electives — few will agree. But, as Dutton and 
Snedden show, the practical agreement on this 
problem is really greater than might appear at 
first thought. "At present it may be said that 
throughout the secondary schools of the United 
States there are prescribed: a foreign language, 
algebra and geometry, English, a science, and one 
year in history. This makes about two-thirds of 
the course, leaving certain possible alternations, to 
be made according as the student aims to enter 
this or that college, or to go into active life." 1 
Of the six prescribed studies, three (algebra, 
geometry, and English) are definite prescriptions, 
and three (foreign language, science, and his- 
tory) are group electives. Of course, in many 
high-schools the foreign language or science or 
history is definitely prescribed, but we may con- 
sider it the present tendency to put these studies 
into groups. The authors also emphasize the in- 
fluence upon this course of the doctrine of formal 
discipline. "Latin and methematics occupy promi- 
nent places in all secondary school curricula be- 
cause of a general belief in their value as agents 
of mental training. This is illustrated by the fact 
that in almost all high schools mathematics is a 
prescribed study for girls as well as boys, al- 
though the former will very rarely follow the sub- 



SECONDARY CURRICULUM 141 

ject up and apply it to cultural or vocational 
stages. This theory has also affected the charac- 
ter of the teaching of other subjects not originally 
introduced for disciplinary purposes. Modern 
languages, science, and even history have been 
modified along lines supposed to be suited to men- 
tal training." 1 

It is helpful in this connection to quote how a 
leading opponent of the doctrine of formal dis- 
cipline outlines definite prescriptions and group 
electives in the secondary curriculum: ''The mini- 
mum of prescription is indicated by our study of 
relative educational values. No important field 
of knowledge must be overlooked; no essential 
type of mental training ignored Following the 
the order of our discussion of values, we see that 
the great types are the natural sciences, the hu- 
manities, and the economic studies. Of the first 
grand division mathematics, an exact science, and 
an evolutionary science are necessary to repre- 
sentative completeness of knowledge and mental 
training; of the second grand division, linguistics, 
literature, art, and history form the irreducible 



1 Dutton and Snedden, Administration of Public Education in the 
United States, pp. 366, 362. A similar discussion is to be found in 
Brown (J. F.), American High School, Chap. VII. Brown expresses 
a belief in the specific character of mental discipline but fails to make 
a consistent application of his belief in his program of studies. 



142 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

minimum; of the third or economic grand divis- 
ion, some mastery of economic theory and some 
manual training or some skill in using the machin- 
ery of exchange are the essentials." (De Gar- 
mo.) 1 

Although the criticisms made against the hap- 
hazard selection of elements in the elementary 
curriculum apply with equal force to the second- 
ary curriculum, we will not repeat our former dis- 
cussion, but will confine our attention to the pre- 
scribed and the group elective system and to the 
general method aim of the high-school. 

Does the present secondary course, as sum- 
marized by Dutton and Snedden, include for the 
majority of pupils the elements of the most com- 
parative value in the environment? As to the 
specific value of subject-matter or of method, it 
does not. Algebra and geometry are of com- 
paratively little specific value to most high-school 
boys and girls, except as a preparation for ad- 
vanced work in similar subjects, which only a few 
will take. The need of algebra and geometry in 
physics has probably been over-elaborated, and 
the need of them in some vocations is a special 
(elective) not a general need. The subject-mat- 
ter of English is, of course, of supreme value in 

1 De Garmo, Principles of Secondary Education, Vol. I, p. 177. 



SECONDARY CURRICULUM 143 

giving an acquaintance with the best uses of our 
language and the best ideals of our literature, 
though there is a doubt as to the environmental 
value of some of the linguistic and literary anat- 
omy now required. The three group electives 
(foreign language, science, and history) vary in 
specific value according to the subject taken in 
each of the three groups. Some studies in a group 
may rank above others in that group in the com- 
munity of their elements with more frequent and 
more important elements in the environment of 
most pupils. Therefore, a pupil may elect from 
a group a study of less value, and this loss in his 
general development may not be compensated for 
by advantages to his individual capacity or ca- 
reer, because in the same group a more valuable 
study for general development might also have 
had just as much value for him individually. As 
has been suggested, the group system is justified 
by its efforts to combine general representative- 
ness with individual freedom, but many efforts of 
this kind fail by sacrificing the former to the lat- 
ter without compensation. It might be wise to 
increase the number of definite prescriptions and 
still leave a surplus for group election. However, 
for both the definite prescriptions and for the 
group electives in the secondary curriculum, there 



144 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

is great need for a more careful study of the spe- 
cific values of subjects than has yet been at- 
tempted. 

In the secondary school, far more than in the 
elementary school, studies have a general method 
value in addition to the value of their specific sub- 
ject-matter and method. The rationalizing ten- 
dency of adolescent pupils can be guided to form 
from the specific methods used general concepts 
of method of great environmental value. But we 
repeat that concentrated effort on the part of both 
teacher and pupil is required to do this. The 
most wasteful weakness in high-school teaching is 
the failure to work out and apply general con- 
cepts of method — from mathematics, concepts of 
an exact and universally valid method; from natu- 
ral sciences, concepts of the inductive and deduc- 
tive phases of scientific method; from languages, 
concepts of how to interpret and master forms of 
expression; from history, concepts of how to un- 
derstand and deal with social conditions. 

What are the kinds of general method to be 
prescribed, definitely or by groups, in the curricu- 
lum of all high-school pupils? First, the method 
of pure mathematics; second, the method of the 
mathematico-physical sciences; third, the method 
of the biological sciences; fourth, the method of 



SECONDARY CURRICULUM 145 

the psychological sciences; fifth, the method of 
the sociological sciences. The first method is exact 
and universally valid — the ideal of all the 
sciences ; the second approaches the first in so far 
as our knowledge of the data and their causes 
allows us to use exact quantitative forms; the 
third includes life variations, and, therefore, can- 
not use exact quantitative forms; the fourth in- 
cludes the psychic in addition to the life varia- 
tions; and the fifth includes the social in addi- 
tion to the life and the psychic variations. 
There is a decrease in exactness and validity 
as we go from the first to the fifth. Every 
high-school pupil should know and use each 
of these five divisions of method, for one 
method cannot take the place of another and 
even within these large divisions there are sub- 
divisions with important differences in method. 
In the secondary curriculum, geometry is a good 
example of the first method, physics of the second, 
botany of the third, psychology of the fourth, 
and history of the fifth. Physical geography uses 
mainly the second and the third methods; lan- 
guage, literature, ethics, and art the fourth and 
fifth. At present, the secondary curriculum is 
weakest in the fifth method, — the most impor- 
tant of the five. It should be specially represented 



i 4 6 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

by history, civics, economics, and commercial geog- 
raphy. In addition to these five divisions of 
method, emphasis should be given to the methods 
of manual, domestic, and industrial training. If 
all high-school pupils are required to work out 
and apply each one of the methods here men- 
tioned, they ought to be well educated, especially 
if the methods have been derived from studies of 
great specific value. 

Our brief mention of elementary and second- 
ary curricula serves only to illustrate the standard 
of values previously outlined. We have confined 
our discussion and our references almost entirely 
to the one problem of mental discipline, with a 
few of its applications. Though we have pur- 
posely omitted any discussion of college educa- 
tion, on account of our skepticism regarding it, 
we believe that the principles emphasized in this 
essay will apply to it also. 

Mental discipline is the most important thing 
in education, but it is specific, not general. The 
ability developed by means of one subject can be 
transferred to another subject only in so far as 
the latter has elements in common with the 
former. Abilities should be developed in school 
only by means of those elements of subject-matter 
and of method that are common to the most val- 



SECONDARY CURRICULUM 147 

uable phases of the outside environment. In the 
high-school there should also be an effort to work 
out general concepts of method from the specific 
methods used. Through courses which develop 
valuable specific abilities and, in addition, valu- 
able concepts of method, the school can become a 
vital, direct means of preparing boys and girls for 
environmental usefulness, especially if the school 
combines, simultaneously <X; successively, with the 
general course such vocational training as will 
make its graduates independent economic factors 
in society. 



OCT 11 1909 



